Sister Rose Pacatte, FSP, is an American film critic and Catholic nun.
In 1967, at age 15, Pacatte entered the Daughters of St. Paul, an order which conducts religious outreach through mass media. [1] [2] She earned an M.Ed in media studies from the University of London's Institute of Education in 1995 [3] [4] and a doctorate in ministry from the Graduate Theological Foundation in 2018. [5] Her doctoral project was an undergraduate film textbook entitled To Seek God's Face: Theological Approaches to Film. [5]
Pacatte is the founding director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies. [6] [7] She has been the resident film critic for the St. Anthony Messenger since 2003 and for the National Catholic Reporter since 2008, [8] reviewing mainstream, independent, and faith-based titles. [9] She has sat on ecumenical juries at the Berlin, Locarno, and Cannes film festivals [10] [11] and on the SIGNIS independent jury at Venice. [12] In 2015, she presented the inaugural "Redeemer" award at the Razzies parody award show. [13] In 2016, she hosted a series of classic films condemned by the National Legion of Decency on Turner Classic Movies. [14] [15]
Gong Li is a Chinese actress. Regarded as one of the best actresses in China today, she is known for her versatility and naturalistic performance. She starred in three of the four Chinese-language films that have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
Helen Prejean is a Catholic religious sister and a leading American advocate for the abolition of the death penalty.
Hirokazu Kore-eda is a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor. He began his career in television and has since directed more than a dozen feature films, including Nobody Knows (2004), Still Walking (2008), and After the Storm (2016). He won the Jury Prize at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival for Like Father, Like Son and won the Palme d'Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival for Shoplifters.
Diane Kruger is a German actress. Early in her career, she gained worldwide recognition and received the Trophée Chopard from the Cannes Film Festival.
Abel Ferrara is an American filmmaker, known for the provocative and often controversial content in his movies and his use and redefinition of neo-noir imagery. A long-time independent filmmaker, some of his best known movies include the New York-set, gritty crime thrillers The Driller Killer (1979), Ms .45 (1981), King of New York (1990), Bad Lieutenant (1992) and The Funeral (1996), chronicling violent crime in urban settings with spiritual overtones.
The cinema of Russia, popularity known as Mollywood, refers to the film industry in Russia, engaged in production of motion pictures in Russian language. The popular term Mollywood is a portmanteau of "Moscow" and "Hollywood".
Peter Mullan is a Scottish actor and filmmaker. He is best known for his role in Ken Loach's My Name Is Joe (1998), The Claim (2000), and all three series of the BBC comedy series Mum, in which he starred as Michael.
Paolo Sorrentino is an Italian film director, screenwriter, and writer. He is considered one of the most prominent filmmakers of Italian cinema working today. He is known for visually striking and complex dramas and has often been compared to Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. He has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, BAFTA Award two Cannes Film Festival prizes, four Venice Film Festival Awards and four European Film Awards. In Italy he was honoured with eight David di Donatello and six Nastro d'Argento.
SIGNIS (official name: World Catholic Association for Communication) is a Roman Catholic lay ecclesial movement for professionals in the communication media, including press, radio, television, cinema, video, media education, internet, and new technology. It is a non-profit organization with representation from over 100 countries. It was formed in November 2001 by the merger of International Catholic Organization for Cinema and Audiovisual (OCIC) and International Catholic Association for Radio and Television (Unda). At its World Congress in Quebec in 2017, SIGNIS welcomed also former member organisations of the International Catholic Union of the Press (UCIP).
Elizabeth A. Johnson is a Roman Catholic feminist theologian. She is a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Theology at Fordham University, a Jesuit institution in New York City and a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood. The National Catholic Reporter has called Johnson "one of the country's most prominent and respected theologians."
The Prize of the Ecumenical Jury is an independent film award for feature-length films shown at major international film festivals since 1973. The award was created by Christian film makers, film critics and other film professionals. The objective of the award is to "honour works of artistic quality which witnesses to the power of film to reveal the mysterious depths of human beings through what concerns them, their hurts and failings as well as their hopes." The ecumenical jury can be composed out of 8, 6, 5, 4 or 3 members, who are nominated by SIGNIS for the Catholics and Interfilm for the Protestants. SIGNIS and Interfilm appoint ecumenical juries at various international film festivals, including Cannes Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, Locarno International Film Festival, Montreal World Film Festival and the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
Marc Gervais, S.J., was a Canadian Jesuit priest, film scholar, writer, and film consultant.
Paradise: Faith is a 2012 Austrian drama film directed by Ulrich Seidl, the second in his Paradise trilogy. The film was nominated for the Golden Lion at the 69th Venice International Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize. It won the award for best sound design at the 26th European Film Awards.
Philomena is a 2013 drama film directed by Stephen Frears, based on the 2009 book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee by journalist Martin Sixsmith. The film stars Judi Dench as Philomena Lee, an elderly woman who has been searching for her son for 50 years, and Sixsmith's efforts to help her find him.
Terrence Malick is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. Throughout his career, which has spanned over four decades, he has directed nine feature films and one documentary. He has also written scripts for other directors, and since the 1990s has acted as producer and executive producer on numerous projects.
A Hidden Life is a 2019 epic historical drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick. It stars August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, and Matthias Schoenaerts, with Michael Nyqvist and Bruno Ganz in their final performances. The film depicts the life of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer and devout Catholic who refused to fight for the Nazis in World War II.
Novitiate is a 2017 American drama film written and directed by Maggie Betts in her feature directorial debut. Starring Margaret Qualley, Melissa Leo, Morgan Saylor, Dianna Agron, Julianne Nicholson, Liana Liberato, Denis O'Hare, and Maddie Hasson, the film follows a young woman (Qualley) who starts to question her faith as she trains to become a nun.
The Nun is a 2018 American gothic supernatural horror film directed by Corin Hardy and written by Gary Dauberman, from a story by Dauberman and James Wan. It serves as a spiritual spin-off to The Conjuring 2 and is the fifth installment in The Conjuring shared universe. The film stars Taissa Farmiga, Demián Bichir and Jonas Bloquet, with Bonnie Aarons reprising her role as the Demon Nun, an incarnation of Valak, from The Conjuring 2. The plot follows a Roman Catholic priest and a nun in her novitiate as they uncover an unholy secret in 1952 Romania. It is followed by a sequel The Nun II, released in 2023.
Mary David Walgenbach is an American nun. She serves as the prioress of Holy Wisdom Monastery in Middleton, Wisconsin.
Dominica or Dominic Dipio is a Ugandan religious sister, a filmmaker, author and a professor of Literature and Film at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. As a sister, she belongs to the Institute of the Missionary Sisters of Mary Mother of the Church, MSMMC, a Ugandan-founded religious congregation in Roman Catholic Diocese of Lira in Northern Uganda. In November 2019 she was appointed Consultor of the Pontifical Council for Culture by Pope Francis.