From a Jesus Christ sensei to Muslim converts: Inside the strange new wave of Christian cinema

The year is 29 AD. A Viking called Oren seeks a fresh start in Nazareth by breaking into the world of mixed martial arts. His journey takes a pivotal turn when he encounters the perfect trainer. And that trainer is none other than... Jesus Christ. This is the premise of The Carpenter, a film that brings together professional fighters, martial arts, and parkour, all set to a soundtrack featuring metal bands like Mötley Crüe and Drowning Pool. While it might initially evoke the spirit of parody films like Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001), The Carpenter is not a comedy. “I fell in love with the premise right away, asking the question so many of us have asked: ‘What was Jesus’ life like in the years leading up to His ministry?’” said director Garrett Batty, who released Faith of Angels, another Christian-themed film with a more restrained tone, this year.

This is yet another example of a “faith-based” film — a term coined in the United States — that shifts away from traditional proselytizing methods to focus on entertainment. Some of these films have achieved surprising returns, though The Carpenter has not followed suit. Released in the U.S. on November 1 in around 500 theaters, the film has earned just over $230,000, far from the $3 million invested by the family of Kameron Krebs, a former college football player from Texas, who plays the lead, Oren.

This trend has also spread to Spain, which saw the recent release of Libera Nos: The Battle of the Exorcists, a movie marketed as “the only documentary approved by the International Association of Exorcists.” In this film, devout viewers can hear the famous Father Gabriele Amorth share reflections such as “the rosary is more powerful than the atomic bomb.”

For those looking for a traditional horror film about exorcism, listening to two priests speak directly to the camera for two hours may not be of interest. These viewers, however, may prefer Nefarious, which was released in 2023. The feature-length drama, grounded in ultra-Christian views, features Satan speaking from the body of a possessed person, telling a psychiatrist he will go to hell for supporting his mother’s euthanasia request and his girlfriend’s decision to have an abortion.

Both Libera Nos and Nefarious arrived in Spain thanks to European Dreams Factory, a distributor specializing in “cinema with values” that speedily releases Christian documentaries and dramas. Its catalog includes titles like Madre no hay más que una (or, There is But One Mother, 2022), a documentary about the Virgin Mary that some might mistakenly interpret as a female version of José Luis Torrente, the fascist former police agent of the dark comedy film saga by Santiago Segura, and Unplanned (2019), an anti-abortion drama from the directors of Nefarious. As stated on their website, European Dreams Factory is backed by a company that manages over 200 screens across Spain.

This is part of a wider trend in cinema. Several successful films in the United States, while largely inconsequential elsewhere, such as Unplanned, God’s Not Dead (2014), Heaven is for Real (2014), and Miracles from Heaven (2016), suggest that these films are expanding beyond their niche audiences. A significant factor in this shift is PureFlix, the evangelical label behind these films and a streaming service now rebranded as Great American PureFlix, owned by Sony. In recent years, PureFlix has attracted actors like Kevin Sorbo, best known for Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995), and Melissa Joan Hart, star of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (1996), and has won over audiences with it unabashedly political twist on these faith-based movies.

One example is the God’s Not Dead film series, which has five installments. The first and most popular film is based on the paranoid idea that the American education system persecutes Christians. In the movie, a teacher forces students to renounce their faith in order to pass. What’s most striking about the movie is how aggressive it is, even for propaganda: non-believers are dehumanized, a vegan woman develops cancer, there are Chinese communists who fear God, and a young Muslim woman is “reconverted” (in an unintentionally funny scene, her family catches her listening to a letter to the Corinthians). In all five films in the saga, David A.R. White — the founder of PureFlix — plays a reverend who acts as the moral compass for the characters. The fifth installment, God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust (released this year), follows White’s character as he runs for office — and, unsurprisingly, wins.

Faith or propaganda?

It is impossible to discuss contemporary ultra-Catholic cinema without mentioning its standout hit, Sound of Freedom (2023), which surpassed Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in U.S. box office earnings — raking in $184 million compared to the archaeologist’s $174 million. But its success at the box office was not without controversy. The film’s promoters used an unconventional system allowing supporters to purchase tickets for others, enabling third parties to claim them for free from a website based on availability. This led to reports on social media from moviegoers who noted empty theaters with “sold-out” showings.

Meanwhile, in conservative circles, there were claims that theaters were trying to hurt the Christian movie, with some claiming that the air conditioning was turned off to deter audiences. In this context, watching Sound of Freedom was framed as an act of defiance or even a political statement.

Sound of Freedom recounts the story of former agent Tim Ballard and his fight against child sex trafficking. However, the film’s well-meaning premise did not protect it from controversy. One scandal stemmed from lead actor Jim Caviezel’s involvement in QAnon conventions, which allege that high-profile Democrats are linked to such trafficking (a claim director Alejandro Monteverde has distanced himself from). Further complicating matters were troubling allegations surrounding the real Tim Ballard, a Trump supporter accused of fabricating child rescue stories and sexual misconduct with multiple women. These allegations culminated in his expulsion from Operation Underground Railroad, the organization he founded, and the actor was even publicly repudiated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“Sound of Freedom clearly has a very intense ideological orientation; it tells lies and invents things, but you only know that if you know Ballard’s history,” critic Alonso Díaz de la Vega tells EL PAÍS. “It’s closer to a thriller or action film, accessible to audiences outside of Christianity.”

Díaz de la Vega, who analyzed the film’s propagandistic underpinnings for Gatopardo, argues that the current political climate in the U.S. — exemplified by Trump’s win in the election — has bolstered the Christian right and reinvigorated alliances between Catholics and Protestants, reminiscent of the 1930s and 1940s when the Hays Code imposed strict moral guidelines in Hollywood. “It has a lot to do with that organization to create a series of films that support their cause,” he adds.

The critic says this new wave of productions departs from the traditional, didactic tone of faith-based films, which often “preached to the choir” without broader appeal. According to Díaz de la Vega, companies like Angel Studios — behind Sound of Freedom — have adopted more sophisticated strategies. Their catalog now includes projects like Cabrini (2024) and the Mormon sci-fi epic The Shift (2023). “I think they are pretty bad movies, but as political artifacts they are perhaps more intelligent. Adopting that disguise allows them to come out to other groups. They are not original or cinematically interesting, and the ideology is embedded in a sufficiently clear way for anyone who reads their dramatic discourse carefully.”

A Contracorriente Films, one of Spain’s leading independent distributors, has played a key role in introducing Angel Studios’ productions to Spanish audiences. Among their releases is After Death, a documentary featuring accounts of near-death experiences where individuals claim to have had encounters with God. While Sound of Freedom did not replicate its U.S. box office success, it still garnered an impressive €3 million ($3.16 million) in Spain. The movie’s producer, Eduardo Verástegui, a Trump supporter, promoted the film algonside far-right Spanish political figures like Santiago Abascal and Ignacio Garriga.

Adolfo Blanco, the founder and president of A Contracorriente, dismisses what he views as “sterile controversies” surrounding the politicization of such films. “Sound of Freedom is a great film that deals with a very delicate subject, that of child trafficking. Personally, I don’t like anyone appropriating this cause,” he tells EL PAÍS.

Blanco says it’s disappointing that people are “against the film because of its producer’s way of thinking.” “Now we have another film out, with deeply Christian values, which some people don’t want to see because certain politicians liked it. I am referring to El 47, applauded by many, including the Spanish prime minister himself,” he says, in reference to Pedro Sánchez, from the Socialist Party (PSOE), who is an atheist.

Blanco says that A Contracorriente used the U.S. ticket sales strategy but did not see the same success (“according to exhibitors here, less than 1% of the spectators went to the cinema with tickets paid for by third parties”), and admits that “it is possible that this direct or indirect politicization of some films could help spark curiosity and boost box office sales.”

The distributor describes the typical audience of A Contracorriente’s movies as “a type of spectator who is not necessarily a film buff and who goes to see the films that reaffirm their beliefs.” He prefers the term “cinema of Christian values” over “Christian cinema,” emphasizing that these values align “closely with universally recognized human rights,” and argues that this type of popular, genre-driven storytelling has always had a place in the market.

Dr. David Caldevilla of the Complutense University of Madrid interprets the rise of these films as “a response to the woke, an ideological brake with a supremacist and KKK-like stench.” “The woke has always tried to ridicule religious concepts a bit, so it is an action-reaction phenomenon,” he tells EL PAÍS. “It is the law of the tuning fork, the more the pendulum swings in one direction, the more it will swing back in the other. They also want to see themselves reflected in films and series.”

Caldevilla calls Mel Gibson the “standard-bearer of these ideologies supposedly outside the Hollywood mainstream,” despite the presence of many Republicans in Hollywood, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California.

Díaz de la Vega notes that while these films have been successful in the U.S., where “evangelical narratives are having so much social, cultural and political success,” their impact internationally is more limited. He compares them to subtle propaganda efforts, such as the Nazi film Titanic (1943), which covertly implicated British incompetence in the ship’s sinking. “It’s not a film that explicitly tells you how much better the Germans are or any idea that has to do with their racial theories, but it adds to the context of what you read in newspapers and hear on radios. The contagion comes from many directions.”

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