Best Faith Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of faith cinema — measured across 1,982 indexed frames from 26 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Faith films over-index on denim jacket, sunglasses and girl — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
21 Grams (2003)
Alejandro G. IñárrituDP Rodrigo PrietoIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
Paul Rivers, an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English émigré; Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife and mother of two girls; and Jack Jordan, a born-again ex-con, are brought together by a terrible accident that changes their lives.
- 2
The Book of Eli (2010)
Allen Hughes, Albert HughesDP Don BurgessIMDb 6.8TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →
In a violent post-apocalyptic society, a drifter, Eli (Denzel Washington), has been wandering westward across North America for the last thirty years. He finds solace in a unique book which he carries on his person and guards closely, while surviving by hunting small animals and seeking goods in destroyed houses and vehicles to trade in villages for water and supplies. When he reaches a village ruled by the powerful mobster, Carnegie (Gary Oldman), the man views Eli's impressive fighting skills and offers Eli a place within his gang. Carnegie presses his blind lover Claudia (Jennifer Beals) to send her daughter, Solara (Mila Kunis), to at least convince Eli to spend the night by sleeping with him. However, Eli proves to be the better man when he gently declines her advances. The girl sees Eli's book, and when Carnegie finds out he beats her mother until she reveals what she saw. Carnegie sends his gang into the wasteland to take the book from Eli, but the man proves to be a formidable foe as he makes it more than clear that if they want the book, they must first take his life.
- 3
Signs (2002)
M. Night ShyamalanDP Tak FujimotoIMDb 6.8TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →
Preacher Graham Hess loses his faith in God after his wife dies in a brutal car accident. He lives with his children and brother in a farmhouse. Crop circles start to appear in their cornfields; Graham dismisses them as mischief by miscreants. After hearing strange noises and watching news coverage on crop circles appearing all over the world, the family grows suspicious of alien activities. Now they must stick together as a family and believe, to survive and escape the ordeal.
- 4
The Good Girl (2002)
Miguel ArtetaDP Enrique ChediakIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.2See in full on FrameThrower →
The plot revolves around a young married woman whose mundane life takes a turn for the worse when she strikes up a passionate and illicit affair with an oddball discount-store stock boy who thinks he's Holden Caulfield.
- 5
The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
Lana Wachowski, Lilly WachowskiDP Bill PopeIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →
In this second adventure, Neo and the rebel leaders estimate that they have 72 hours until Zion falls under siege to the Machine Army. Only a matter of hours separates the last human enclave on Earth from 250,000 Sentinels programmed to destroy mankind. But the citizens of Zion, emboldened by Morpheus conviction that the One will fulfill the Oracles Prophecy and end the war with the Machines, rest all manner of hope and expectation on Neo, who finds himself stalled by disturbing visions as he searches for a course of action.
- 6
Wild Strawberries (1957)
Ingmar BergmanDP Gunnar FischerIMDb 8.1TMDB 8.1See in full on FrameThrower →
With the exception of his elderly housekeeper Miss Agda who he treats almost like a surrogate platonic wife, widowed seventy-eight year old Dr. Isak Borg, a former medical doctor and professor, has retreated from any human contact, partly his own want but partly the decision of others who do not want to spend time with him because of his cold demeanor. He is traveling from his home in Stockholm to Lund to accept an honorary degree. Instead of flying as was the original plan, he decides to take the day long drive instead. Along for the ride is his daughter-in-law Marianne, who had been staying with him for the month but has now decided to go home. The many stops and encounters along the way make him reminisce about various parts of his life. Those stops which make him reminisce directly are at his childhood summer home, at the home of his equally emotionally cold mother, and at a gas station where the attendants praise him as a man for his work. But the lives of other people they encounter almost mirror his own, including hitchhikers Sara, Viktor and Anders - who remind him of his cousin Sara who he was going to marry, himself and his irresponsible brother Sigfrid who Sara eventually married - a bickering married couple Sten and Berit Alman, and Marianne and her husband and Isak's son Evald, whose marriage is as strained as was his own.
- 7
Thelma (2017)
Joachim TrierDP Jakob IhreIMDb 6.9TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →
Having just enrolled at a university in Oslo against her stern parents' will, the sheltered Biology freshman and devout Christian, Thelma, leaves for the first time the isolated Norwegian countryside, to start a new life away from home. Tangibly lonely, a casual conversation and one unexpected friendship with the beautiful fellow student, Anja, will broaden Thelma's hazy horizons; however, as the glacially alluring misfit wrestles with an onslaught of novel feelings, little by little, an unprecedented psychosomatic manifestation of repressed emotions start to take over. Indeed, a mystery cloaks soft-spoken Thelma's past, and the more she struggles to renounce her nebulous desire, the more violent becomes her quivering awakening. Can Thelma unearth a denied truth behind the stinging temptation?
- 8
First Reformed (2017)
Paul SchraderDP Alexander DynanIMDb 7.1TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →
Ethan Hawkeas Pastor Ernst Toller
Amanda Seyfriedas Mary Mensana
Cedric the Entertaineras Pastor Joel Jeffers
Forty-six year old Reverend Ernst Toller is the pastor at the historic First Reformed Church in upstate New York. It is seen as the "tourist" church or the "souvenir shop" (its historical significance partly it being a stop on the underground railroad before the slaves crossed into Canada) by Abundant Life, which owns the church and which operates a modern self-named five thousand seat church overseen by Reverend Joel Jeffers. First Reformed is celebrating its two hundred fiftieth anniversary this year, for which a major event is planned, modest in size only at First Reformed itself although the dignitaries like the governor and mayor will be at attendance there, while the event will be simulcast at Abundant Life. Most of the speech-making will be done by local industrialist Ed Balq, a major benefactor of Abundant Life and who is the major donor for the necessary upgrades at First Reformed to be able to hold the event there, and for the event itself, while Toller's participation will be minimal beyond the introductory sermon. First Reformed is generally a sparsely attended church meaning that Toller doesn't have to do much direct ministering, although he does have the stock answers when asked how God factors into this or that situation in one's life. Toller himself has long been divorced, his marriage which could not survive the death of their son, Joseph, in war. Because of that history, Toller believes he is incapable of human love, despite a brief relationship with Esther, the choir mistress at Abundant Life, she who is arguably still in love with him. Toller is neglecting the warning signs about his poor health, the symptoms pointing to a probable diagnosis of stomach cancer, which is only exacerbated by his largely liquid (i.e. alcohol) diet. Toller is already examining his life and work in writing a daily journal for a year, that journal which he intends no one ever to read, but these issues in Toller's life become more pointed when a new pregnant congregant, Mary, asks him to speak to her husband Michael, who Toller will learn is an environmentalist concerned about bringing another human life into what he already sees as a world doomed because of man's role in climate change.
- 9
Knock at the Cabin (2023)
M. Night ShyamalanDP Jarin BlaschkeIMDb 6.1TMDB 6.3See in full on FrameThrower →
While vacationing at a remote cabin, a young girl and her two fathers are taken hostage by four armed strangers who demand that the family make an unthinkable choice to avert the apocalypse. With limited access to the outside world, the family must decide what they believe before all is lost.
- 10
Women Talking (2022)
Sarah PolleyDP Luc MontpellierIMDb 6.9TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →
Do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. In 2010, the women of an isolated religious community grapple with reconciling a brutal reality with their faith.
What faith films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a faith frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — denim jacket is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- denim jacket3.1×
- sunglasses2.4×
- girl2.2×
- book2.1×
- coat1.8×
- microphone1.6×
- clouds1.5×
How faith films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate faith from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 31%nightvs 42% baseline
- 52%dayvs 43% baseline
- 83%eye levelvs 69% baseline
What breaks the pattern
Children Of Men (2006) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 1,982 frames from 26 films carrying the faith label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (404,689 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/faith
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