137 mins, 1964, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Join the Chaplaincy to watch an Italian biblical drama film in the neorealist style, written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It is a cinematic rendition of the story of Jesus (portrayed by non-professional actor Enrique Irazoqui) according to the Gospel of Matthew, from the Nativity through the Resurrection. The dialogue is taken directly from the Gospel of Matthew, as Pasolini felt that "images could never reach the poetic heights of the text." He reportedly chose Matthew's Gospel over the others because he had decided that "John was too mystical, Mark too vulgar, and Luke too sentimental."

The film is considered a classic of world cinema and the neorealist genre. After initial release, it won the Venice Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, and three Nastro d'Argento Awards including Best Director. It was also nominated for three Academy Awards. In 2015, the Vatican City newspaper L'Osservatore Romano called it the best film on Christ ever made.

NOTE: In 1963, the figure of Christ appeared in Pier Paolo Pasolini's short film La ricotta, included in the omnibus film RoGoPaG, which led to controversy and a jail sentence for the allegedly blasphemous and obscene content in the film. According to Barth David Schwartz's book Pasolini Requiem (1992), the impetus for the film took place in 1962. Pasolini had accepted Pope John XXIII's invitation for a new dialogue with non-Catholic artists, and subsequently visited the town of Assisi to attend a seminar at a Franciscan monastery there. The papal visit caused traffic jams in the town, leaving Pasolini confined to his hotel room; there, he came across a copy of the New Testament. Pasolini read all four Gospels straight through, and he claimed that adapting a film from one of them "threw in the shade all the other ideas for work I had in my head."