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?