THE London Film Festival (5 to 16 October) offers numerous films of a religious or spiritual nature. Apart from cinemas, the Festival has a selection of films on BFI Player until 23 October plus some countrywide theatrical releases.
The politicisation of religion, for good or ill, occurs several times. At the heart of Boy From Heaven, a fisherman’s son gets a scholarship to Cairo’s Islamic school only to be drawn into a spy network. There’s an overlapping theme in the animation film Unicorn Wars. Cuddly teddy-bear soldiers are taught in church that they alone are God’s children and so all unicorns must be exterminated.
After the 2016 terrorist attack in Bangladesh, Faraaz shows how non-violent Muslims’ faith become associated with religious extremism. Can they overcome the resulting hostility from those of other faiths?
A crumbling geriatric ward in Bethlehem Hospital acts as a paradigm for contemporary politics in Alan Bennett’s Allelujah. Incarnational values of care are under threat from Whitehall reformers. The questioning of the beliefs currently underlying our social arrangements is likewise reflected in Holy Spider. It utilises a serial-killer thriller to evaluate Iran’s judicial system.
The 1978 kidnapping and murder of the Italian politician Aldo Moro is central to Marco Bellocchio’s Exterior Night television series. The reactions of the Church and Pope Paul VI promise interesting viewing.
Outside the political arena, matters of faith, regularly under examination in films, often highlight hopeful prospects. This year’s Ecumenical Jury at the Venice Film Festival honoured The Whale for offering the possibility of forgiveness and salvation. Darren Aronofsky considers how church-dictated hetero-norms of family love may affect someone with a different sexual orientation.
Another kind of religious battle takes place in The Wonder. This time it’s scientific arguments over an 11-year-old’s claim she hasn’t eaten for months, “surviving on manna from heaven”. Religious dispute isn’t with the outside world in Women Talking. Female members of an isolated Mennonite colony have been drugged, assaulted, and, in some instances, impregnated. Leaders claim God is punishing them for sins that they have committed. Frances McDormand heads a cast of eloquent women debating how to reconcile their faith with an issue by no means confined to their own sect.
How people’s beliefs develop in the light of experience is another aspect to the Festival schedule. For Godland, a Danish priest, full of youthful certainty, is sent to 19th-century Iceland only to be changed (for better or worse?) by what and whom he encounters.
Nadeem, a Muslim, in Crows Are White meets Buddhist monks in Japan. We share his struggle to reconcile conflicting outlooks. A plastic model of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Our Lady of the Chinese Shop convinces buyers of its holy powers. A snare for gullible, desperate people, or an invitation to dare to dream of new beginnings?
Finally, it will be fascinating to see what Jerzy Skolimowsk does in EO (the sound of braying): a homage to, yet different from, Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar, in which a humble donkey is a Christ-figure — by no means the only one in the Festival programme.
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