Nazarín

Padre Nazario lives among the poor and gives away everything he has. When he shelters Andara, a wounded prostitute who has killed a man, the church investigates him. He leaves his cassock and takes to the road as a beggar. Beatriz, a woman in poor mental health, goes with him. In the villages he passes through he tries to do good, and mostly it is either misunderstood or turns against him. Luis Bunuel directed, adapting Benito Perez Galdos's novel with Julio Alejandro. It won the international prize at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival. Andrei Tarkovsky counted it among his ten favourite films. Its reception is the curious part: in 1995 the Vatican placed Nazarin on its list of important films, under Religion. The Catholic critic Steven Greydanus noted the film's religious scepticism while allowing that it engages seriously with questions of faith, which is probably why church circles valued it. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 86 percent from 14 reviews with an 8.3 average. Who it is for: viewers who like films built on faith that refuse to answer, and Bunuel's Mexican period. Who it is not for: anyone who needs the priest's effort to be rewarded. The film describes a world where goodness does not work and never makes up for it.