It could be argued that religion is highly photogenic. All kinds of religions can be beautifully aesthetic, with elaborate and ornate temples and cathedrals, colorful clothing, and powerful music. The millennia of great religious art testifies to this, so it's no wonder that filmmakers, too, sometimes turn to religion for inspiration.
Indeed, some of the earliest movies were made in the religious register, from the Salvation Army's 1900 production of Soldiers of the Cross to Alice Guy-Blache's gorgeous The Birth, the Death, and the Life of Christ from 1906. Since then, cinema has utilized the rich histories and ecstasies of different religions to tell great stories that have moved audiences of differing, if any, faith backgrounds. Heck, some films have practically become their own religions in the process, like J.J. Abrams and Star Wars.
Updated April 8th, 2023: In honor of the Easter holiday weekend, we updated this list of masterful films with deeply religious themes, adding additional content and evenhigher quality.
A great religious film taps into the feelings and passions of specific beliefs, exploring the meaningful rituals and lives within them and teaching audiences a thing or two in the process. These are some of the best films with religious themes.
15 The Flowers of St. Francis
Italian neorealist master Roberto Rossellini paints a fittingly sparse but joyful portrait of St. Francis of Assisi and the birth of the Franciscan movement with The Flowers of St. Francis. The breezy, low-stakes, and quirky film is nearly as ascetic as Francis himself, stripping down narrative and melodrama to simply present the titular saint and his followers wandering throughout 13th century Italy and spreading their loving, monastic, and pacifist teachings.
Rossellini actually cast the film with real monks from the Nocera Inferiore Monastery, and his cast of non-actors are delightful to watch in this eccentric historical and religious biography.
14 Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring is a quiet Buddhist film that patiently observes the growth and maturity of a young student training to be a monk, almost entirely within the setting of a small temple floating on a lake. The poignancy and spiritual power of the film has moved people of all persuasions.
In fact, non-believer Roger Ebert once wrote of the film, "We are moved and comforted by its story of timelessness, of the transcendence of the eternal." The cycles of seasons and lives in Kim Ki-duk's film flow into each other, radiating the wisdom of ancient teaching while revealing the noble truths of Buddhism.
13 Malcolm X
Believe it or not, Spike Lee's biopic of the notorious but often misrepresented human rights activist, Malcolm X, contains a refreshingly authentic look into Islam. The arc of Denzel Washington's character, from hateful criminal to Black Panther to devout and loving Muslim, depicts one of the greatest representations of religious conversion ever portrayed on film, thanks to both his phenomenal performance and Lee's detailed research.
12 King of Kings
The great Nicholas Ray remade Cecil B. DeMille's 1927 epic with an even bigger film about the life of Jesus of Nazareth, King of Kings. The vibrantly colorful, big-budget adaptation manages to cover a wide swath of time while still feeling authoritative in its retelling of the Gospels. With a massive cast and wonderful narration from Orson Welles, this is one of the best portrayals of Jesus' full life ever put to film.
11 Dogma
There is an important component of religion which often goes unmentioned-- humor; anyone who has heard the Dalai Lama laugh, or seen a platypus, surely concurs. Kevin Smith's Dogma opens with just this sentiment, disclaiming that "even God has a sense of humor" before launching into an epic and hilarious Catholic quest.
Along the way, a cavalcade of clever celebrity performances, aided by the quotidian wit of Smith's script, reminds viewers of all faiths that spirituality is often healthiest when playful.
10 Fiddler on the Roof
Cinema owes a great deal to Judaism, as Jewish immigrants were largely responsible for the creation and flourishing of Hollywood. Many masterpieces are based on Jewish stories, but Fiddler on the Roof may be the most comprehensive film about Judaism. Released seven years after the blockbuster musical, Norman Jewison's film details the rituals, traditions, and struggles of Jewish life through the lens of family, which has always been central to the Jewish tradition.
9 First Reformed
Paul Schrader has always shared a similar obsession with religion as his frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese, and First Reformed is his most explicit and provocatively religious film to date. Drawing from spiritual classics like Winter Light and Diary of a Country Priest, Schrader tells the tale of a Protestant minister caught up in doubt as he witnesses his church succumb to political and corporate influences.
Locating faith within the modern world of climate change and dirty politicians, this sometimes strange movie is an urgent meditation on suffering and compassion which appeals to viewers both with and without faith.
8 Andrei Rublev
Andrei Rublev is a massive spiritual biography of one of Russia's greatest religious painters, created by one of Russia's greatest spiritual filmmakers, Andrei Tarkovsky. The film grapples with deep questions of Christianity, suffering, church and state, while also powerfully suggesting the spiritual potential of art itself. Tarkovsky guides audiences through Eastern Orthodox monasteries, villages, and seminaries, focusing on the interesting intersection of faith and art, which is exactly where this film resides.
7 Ordet
Carl Dreyer's filmography reflects a serious man grappling with faith and what it means to truly believe in God, and his last film, Ordet, is his swan song. While it lacks the artistry and intensity of his film about Joan of Arc, the movie is still one of the most quietly moving and utterly convincing portraits of belief and miracles in the history of cinema. It's a stiff, stark film, but the ending feels like a moment of true religious ecstasy.
6 The Last Temptation of Christ
Though viscerally protested against as blasphemous upon release, The Last Temptation of Christ creates one of cinema's most illuminating and personal portrait of Jesus of Nazareth.
Martin Scorsese discovers in Christ the greatest manifestation of the filmmaker's perpetual struggle between the sacred and the profane — Christ is at once both divine God and dirty human; Christ is bloodied and killed, and yet risen and ascended. No other film portrays the utter humanity of Christ in a way which elucidates his temptations and suffering and, in doing so, reveals ours.
5 The Passion of Joan of Arc
Carl Dreyer's silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc, mesmerizes with its haunting close-ups of intense performances and uncomfortably personal direction, and acts as both an indictment of the institutional church and a celebration of the passion and zeal of spiritual legends.
Renee Falconetti's portrayal of Joan has been called "the greatest acting performance in movie history" by The Daily Beast and others for a reason — her work carries so much spiritual weight and conviction here, channeling countless martyrs and persecuted women in her searing, magnetic gaze. This is one of the greatest film about the many saints.
4 A Hidden Life
Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life tells the story of Franz Jagerstatter, the martyred Austrian who was a conscientious objector during World War II and refused to sign the required oath of allegiance to Hitler.
Situating itself in the long and inspiring tradition of non-violence in religion, this is a jaw-droppingly beautiful film about what faith looks like, Malick's best since The Tree of Life. Later beatified by the Catholic Church, the pacifist's story is a testament to both the danger and passion of choosing God over Nation, love over hate, and peace over war.
3 Silence
The aforementioned Martin Scorsese returned to religion four decades after his Last Temptation with this astonishing update of Shusaku Endo's novel (and Masahiro Shinoda's film) Silence. One of the best representations of the danger, commitment, and horror of evangelism and missions work, Silence pulls no punches in its often brutal vision of the clash of cultures which always occurred when Catholicism attempted to convert people of other faiths.
Despite the despair in the film, and the serious questions it asks about faith, it is grounded by the deep empathy and passion which live in the heart of religious experiences. This is a thought-provoking spiritual masterpiece, one which is representative of the deep complexities and difficulties of religion and faith.
2 Au Hasard Balthazar
Most of Robert Bresson's films were about redemption, but for the Jansenist director, redemption and salvation are found through the endurance of great suffering. Perhaps his most painful film to watch, Au Hasard Balthazar, turns a donkey into a Christ-like figure that endures the sins of humanity.
Everyone in the film is borderline sadistic and cruel (or abused by people who are), and the animal endures beatings, burnings, and abandonment, like Christ on the cross. Nonetheless, the ending feels like a spiritual confession, and watching it is like a solemn Good Friday Mass which moves the soul more than any other service.
As Ty Burr writes in his Boston Globe review, "To see Au Hasard Balthazar is to understand the limits of religious literalism in movies -- the limits, even, of movies themselves. Bresson pares everything away until all that's left are the things we do and the hole left by the things we could have done but didn't."
1 Winter Light
Numerous Ingmar Bergman films could be considered here as the greatest movies with religious themes. Faith was one of the important director's most consistent themes, and he took it seriously, exploring it in masterpieces like Through a Glass Darkly, The Silence, Fanny and Alexander, and The Seventh Seal. Winter Light, though, may be his most explicit meditation on religion, and arguably his best.
The solemn, chilly film follows a sick priest at a dying parish over the course of a day. A woman loves him, and he resents her for it; a suicidal man asks for his help; he is losing his religion and is close to no longer believing in God. Winter Light patiently says more in its short runtime than most directors can in their entire careers. The film has the potential to transform the way someone thinks about faith for the better.