Can Movies Function as a Mode of Religious Instruction?

SINCE ITS PREMIERE in late 2023, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days — a quiet, contemplative film about a janitor who cleans Tokyo’s public toilets — has been showered with accolades, including a Cannes Film Festival Palm d’Or nomination, an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature, two Japan Academy Film awards for Best Director (Wenders) and Actor (Kōji Yakusho), and even an Ecumenical Jury Prize, an independent award created by international Christian media organizations SIGNIS and Interfilm.

All these honors more or less speak for themselves, except — perhaps — the last one. Perfect Days is, after all, neither a Christian film nor an explicitly religious one. Except for the occasional reference to concepts related to Buddhism, such as meditation, karma, and nirvana, the only time protagonist Hirayama seems to make contact with some sort of higher power is when he listens to Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” on his way to work each morning.

Fortunately for Wenders, Ecumenical Juries — which attend film festivals across the world — don’t limit themselves to the likes of Jesus Christ Superstar or The Passion of the Christ. At least, not anymore. “Initially, the focus was on films reflecting the Christian worldview,” says S. Brent Plate, a professor of religious studies at Hamilton College in New York, longtime Ecumenical Jury member, and author of Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-creation of the World. “Over time, we shifted toward a broader interpretation of that focus, looking for films that, even if they don’t directly address religion, promote humanistic, progressive values.”

As a result of this shift, the Ecumenical Jury’s mission has come to raise worthwhile questions for film aficionados and religious scholars alike: Can movies function as a mode of religious instruction, bringing us closer to the divine the way a sermon might? Can they teach us how to be better people, inspiring us to lead more fulfilling lives by untangling the mysteries of the human condition? And, most important perhaps, can they nourish our spirit, impart morality, and help us overcome moments of personal crises in an age where the historical provider of such services in the West — the church — is losing its longstanding influence?

brinkhof2.png

What is an Ecumenical Jury?

ACCORDING TO SIGNIS’ website, the Ecumenical Jury Prize was established in 1974 by a “group of Christian film professionals” looking to award films that “express spiritual, human, and ethical values.” The first jury made its debut at Cannes, where it awarded Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, a film about the unlikely relationship between an old, widowed German woman and a Gastarbeiter (“guest worker”) from Morocco: a heartfelt response to the racist, xenophobic sentiments the arrival of such workers elicited in Germany.

As is customary for film festivals, juries change from year to year. Today, Ecumenical Juries attend film festivals around the globe, from Bratislava to Locarno. The juries are as diverse as the films they celebrate: Judges hail from a wide variety of personal, professional, and denominational backgrounds. Plate, born in the U.S., is an academic, as was Johanna Haberer, who taught theology and journalism before retiring to Thessaloniki, Greece, to become the pastor of a German-speaking church. Micah Bucey and Dirk von Jutrczenka are ministers, too, the former serving in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and the latter in Bremen, Germany. Bucey, a self-described “flaming fairy,” is part of a growing interfaith network of religious groups that affirm LGBTQ+ people, while von Jutrczenka founded a discussion forum called “Church and Film” and recently produced Deutschkurz, a documentary about refugees attending German language courses.

The diversity of Ecumenical Juries, which increasingly recruit judges from Judaism, Islam, and other major world religions, reflects their commitment to religious pluralism — the willingness to accept and respect differing practices and convictions, rather than reconcile them under a single, superimposed dogma.

Instead of awarding films that follow the Bible word for word, or align with the teachings of specific theologians, Ecumenical Juries celebrate narratives that promote universal values contained within the gospel, such as compassion, forgiveness, peace, and justice — broad criteria that each judge is free to interpret as they see fit. “We look for films that depict human dignity and address social issues,” Haberer says. “Equally important,” von Jutrczenka adds, “is how the film expresses its themes, whether it conveys its message in an effective and inventive way,” as poor execution can prevent even the most touching stories from leaving their mark on viewers.

But while style is important, it should not overshadow substance. “We can tell early on if a film won’t be part of our final selection,” Plate explains. “Even when they’re technically impressive, or made by a well-known director, movies that prioritize visual experimentation over meaningful storytelling just don’t align with the goals of the prize.”

The films that win Ecumenical Jury Prizes tend to strike a careful balance, with lighting, editing, and cinematography reinforcing storytelling, and vice versa. At the 2024 Berlinale (the Berlin International Film Festival), for example, Plate and his fellow judges chose a Norwegian film titled Sex, by Dag Johan Haugerud, about two men in heterosexual relationships whose friendship causes them to question their own sexuality, because its “long takes matched the story’s contemplative nature, challenging societal assumptions about gender roles.”

brinkhof4.png

Others win because they challenge religious institutions themselves, inviting viewers to turn a critical eye to the traditions of their own faith. “It was the most politically significant film we saw at the festival,” Haberer says of The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which was awarded the Ecumenical Jury Prize at Cannes last year. The film, which follows employees of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran as they struggle to contain nationwide protests following the murder of a young woman, “exposes how corrupt religious systems can destroy families, causing Iran’s younger generations to stand up against an oppressive, patriarchal regime.” The same can be said of another Iranian film, Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha’s My Favorite Cake, which won the prize at the 2024 Berlinale and follows a young Iranian woman who makes the bold decision to live freely in her own society despite the possibly dire consequences.

While some Ecumenical Jury Prize winners expose problems, others look for solutions. Such is the case for Perfect Days, which won the Cannes award in 2023 and, contrary to what its mundane plot would suggest, ends up tackling some of humanity’s biggest questions. Born to a wealthy family with high expectations for him, Hirayama became a janitor because the otherwise enviable life laid out for him proved unfulfilling, and it was precisely through this humble profession that he was able to find inner peace. Living each day according to a simple but strict routine — which, in addition to his work, involves watering his houseplants, reading books, and listening to cassette tapes as he drives down Tokyo’s snaking highways—he believes himself to be 100% content, and by the time the credits role, the audience believes him, too.

“Sleep in peace when day is done,” Simone sings, “that’s what I mean.”

brinkhof3.png

Film and religion

CONSIDERING THE INHERENT complexity and subjectivity of the topic, it should come as no surprise that discourse on the relationship between film and religion — which informs the decisions of Ecumenical judges — spans a large, constantly evolving body of academic literature. Early writers in the field tended to restrict themselves to high-brow, art-house cinema, while subsequent generations of scholars broadened their scope to include more popular films, including major Hollywood blockbusters.

At the same time, scholars moved beyond straightforward biblical adaptations such as Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments and began paying attention to films that were not expressly religious. In Afterimage: The Indelible Catholic Imagination of Six American Filmmakers, for instance, Richard A. Blake argued that filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, and Francis Ford Coppola consciously and subconsciously transposed images from their Christian upbringing into their largely non-Christian films.

Of course, many nonreligious filmmakers draw from religious symbolism also. Not because these symbols played a significant role in their personal lives, but because they are — by virtue of Christianity’s centuries-long hold on European art and culture — deeply intertwined with Western storytelling traditions. To this day, introductory screenwriting books such as Robert McKee’s Story and Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! — not to mention Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces—frequently reference Genesis or Exodus to explain concepts such as the three act structure, a narrative framework that has more or less remained unchanged from the recording of the Hebrew Bible all the way down to the release of Avengers: Endgame and beyond.

While research from the 20th century was largely limited to literary analysis — studying films the same way one might study a novel — works from the 21st also examine the act of moviegoing itself. Plate’s Cinema and the Re-creation of the World, for example, not only recognizes the similarities between churches and cinemas (both involve groups of people coming together for an audiovisual experience that invites them to view the world from a different perspective) but also film’s unparalleled ability to construct an alternative universe that — in spite of its constructed nature — at times can appear somehow more real than the real world.

Discourse on the relationship between film and religion also invariably touches upon cinema’s potential to engage with religious concepts. This potential differs from that of other, older art forms such as painting. “Cinema is uniquely immersive,” explains Magali van Reeth, vice-president of SIGNIS Europe and longtime Ecumenical Juries member. “When you enter the projection room, seated in the dark, you are, body and soul, taken away. You feel communion with the rest of the audience — especially [at] comedies or horror films — and generally don’t require education or instruction to enjoy them.”

“Accessibility is key,” Bucey adds. “Historically, religion has always moved toward openness. Just as the Reformation taught us we didn’t need priests as intermediaries, so too does film open up spiritual and philosophical exploration to people who might not otherwise engage with that sort of thing.”

Another advantage of film — one it shares with music — is its ephemeralness. Unlike paintings, statues, or architecture, which are static, unchanging, frozen in place, cinema exists not in space but in time. A film cannot be hung on a wall or placed on a pedestal to be viewed in its entirety; it must be experienced second-by-second, making each scene and each shot literally inseparable from the whole. It offers glimpses of another, impermanent plane, not in spite but because it does not and cannot fully exist in our own.

Whereas initial research on the relationship between film and religion expressed interest in the former only insofar as it offered affirmation of the latter, today’s scholars, including those serving on Ecumenical Juries, have turned the formula on its head.

“Part of the reason I enjoy showing films in my classrooms is their capacity to challenge our theological assumptions,” Plate says. “Watching films together encourages conversation and reflection, and while we generally avoid highly cynical films, earnest skepticism can be productive. Think of Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light, which portrays doubt and loss of religion — a reality for many. Such films help viewers grapple with their faith, which often grows in doubt.”

Asked whether he thinks the progressive, inclusive guidelines of the Ecumenical Jury Prize are in any way a reflection of Christian institutions’ increasing willingness to modernize — to meet younger generations on their own, godless turf and speak to them in the neutral languages of film, art, and culture, rather than the language of the church — Bucey brings up Conclave, a political thriller from 2024 about a cardinal investigating scandals in and around the Vatican. “It felt like an interrogation of patriarchy,” he says. “It was upsetting but also gave me a feeling of promise about where we can go as people. The story is specific to the Catholic Church, but its real power was the universal message that patriarchy is everywhere, and when it gets disrupted, it changes.”