Greatest Films of Art and Spirituality

The life of Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of Matthew. Film shows Christ as a Marxist avant-la-lettre and therefore uses half of the text of Matthew.

A collection of expertly photographed phenomena with no conventional plot. The footage focuses on the relationship between nature, humanity, and technology.

An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.

A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.

A dying man in his forties remembers his past. His childhood, his mother, the war, personal moments and things that tell of the recent history of all the Russian nation.

The story of a mistreated donkey and the people around him. A study on saintliness and a sister piece to Bresson's Mouchette.

A guide leads two men through an area known as the Zone to find a room that grants wishes.

A knight returning to Sweden after the Crusades seeks answers about life, death, and the existence of God as he plays chess against the Grim Reaper during the Black Plague.

The life of the Armenian poet Sayat-Nova, from childhood to death: his spiritual journey, artistic endeavors, and inner conflicts within the cultural and historical context of Armenia. Hailed as revolutionary by Mikhail Vartanov.

A college student gets pregnant without having intercourse, affecting people close and unrelated to her in different ways.

The last collaboration of Artavazd Peleshian and cinematographer Mikhail Vartanov is a film-essay about Armenia's shepherds, about the contradiction and the harmony between man and nature, scored to Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

A series of surreal sequences that critique morality and society in a stream of consciousness style.

A man goes for a walk through the countryside with his dying mother.

A young girl living in the French countryside suffers constant indignities at the hand of alcoholism and her fellow man.

A petty thief with an utter resemblance to a samurai warlord is hired as the lord's double. When the warlord later dies the thief is forced to take up arms in his place.

The life and music of Johann Sebastian Bach as presented by his wife, Anna.

A naive young man witnesses an escalation of violence in his small hometown following the arrival of a mysterious circus attraction.

A Russian poet and his interpreter travel to Italy researching the life of an 18th-century composer, and instead meet a ruminative madman who tells the poet how the world may be saved.

A nurse is put in charge of a mute actress and finds that their personae are melding together.

A "found foliage" film composed of insects, leaves, and other detritus sandwiched between two strips of perforated tape.

A timeless Carpathian story - the young Ivan falls in love with the daughter of his father's killer among the Hutsul people of Ukraine.

A short film by Aleksandr Sokurov which provides a surreal visual experience.

Follows the lives of the Borgen family, as they deal with inner conflict, as well as religious conflict with each other, and the rest of the town.

Rescued from abandonment and raised by the King and Queen, Oedipus is still haunted by a prophecy--he'll murder his father and marry his mother.