Best Discussion Movies

Robert DeNiro in "The Mission"

One of the things that made Regent College special to Lea and I was the integration of arts and theology. As early as our first year course called The Christian Life, films were paired with the topics we studied in order to highlight certain issues and create a context for discussion.

This week Madis Raspel, our youth minister in Viimsi, called to ask if I could recommend a discussion prompting film for their youth night. I recommended one of my all time favorites The Mission but a whole list of greats came to mind, some of which I haven’t yet had the chance to see. His question also prompted a little google searching to see what lists others have compiled. My lists are below.

What about you? Use the comments at the end of this post to name a couple of top notch films that have highlighted issues of faith or somehow been influential to you.

Movies I’ve Seen and Recommend

• Amistad
• The Apostle
• Contact
• Chariots of Fire
• Dead Man Walking
• The Devil’s Advocate
• Kingdom of Heaven
• Magnolia
• The Mission
• Saved!
• Signs
• Unforgiven
• Wit

On My Must-See List

• Babette’s Feast
• The Big Kahuna
• Blade Runner
• The Kite Runner
• Life of Brian
• Stalker (SciFi – Andrei Tarkovsky – 1979 – Russian)
• The Villiage (Horror – English)

From artsandfaith.com’s Top 100 List

• The Addiction (Horror – Abel Ferrara – 1995 – English)
• Breaking the Waves (Drama – Lars van Trier – 1996 – English)
• Dogville (Drama – Lars van Trier – 2003 – English)
• Romero (Biography – John Duigen – 1989 – English)
• The Year of Living Dangerously (Drama – C.J. Koch – 1982 – English)