CineFé wants to show that Catholic cinema “is not only saints, Jesus or Mary”

O the first Catholic film festival in Portugal, CineFé, starts on Friday in Fatima, Santarém district, with a horror film, to prove that the genre “is not just films about saints, Jesus or Mary”, says the organization.

For three days, the festival wants to be “a meeting place where cinema and spirituality intersect in an innovative way,” explains in a statement the association Essay Unstoppable, which assumes the production of the event.

Innovation appears on the first day, at the Consolata Missionary Auditorium, space of Fatima, in the municipality of Ourém, which welcomes this first edition.

“Nefarious”, a psychological thriller and American Christian suspense, held in 2023 by Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon, opens the festival, in a session that begins at 8:30 on Friday, with the lecture “From Fiction to Real”, by demonologist Nuno André.

“ We want people to understand that there is a range of films of Christian religious theme that not only talk about saints, Jesus or Mary ", explained to the agency Lusa Erick Jesus, one of the founders and organizers of the festival.

Taking advantage of Friday 13, the organization of CineFé marks the start of the festival with the American production on exorcism, trying to escape the stereotype of Catholic cinema.

“ We tried to break this expectation with a horror film, a ‘Hollywoodian’ and Catholic film, trying to show the exorcism close to what the Catholic Church says, while still being a commercial film”, he explained.

CineFé comes up with “a more social bias”, to “show cinema on matters that have to do with the Christian basis, in which Christians believe, and not just films about Jesus, Mary or a saint”, reinforced Erick Jesus.

The festival appears after a trip by the organizer to Italy, to participate in the production of the documentary about Carlos Acutis, an internet-avid Italian teenager, known as “the ‘influencer’ of God”, who died in 2006, at the age of 15, and was canonized by Pope Leo XIV in 2025.

There, Erick Jesus met in Trent the Religion Today Film Festival, an international and itinerant film festival dedicated to interreligious dialogue.

“I found this idea of theirs very interesting” and, as in Portugal there was nothing like it, brought together friends from the audiovisual area and created the new festival.

In the organization process, Erick realized that there are in Portugal “people who liked the theme, but did not have places to display the films”.

CineFé wants to be this space, also launching bridges for reflection on the theme of Catholic-inspired cinema and formation.

After the exhibition of “Nefarious”, Saturday ten films are shown, including two premieres: “The extraordinary life of Carlo Acutis”, by Gustavo Leite and Julia Sondermann, at 5:00 p.m., and “The cross is always handy”, documentary by Rui Caria on a seminarian, at 9:15 p.m.

Sunday there are another dozen films to see in Fatima, in a selection for new directors, with independent cinema and first works.

According to Erick Jesus, the intention is to make an edition of the CineFé every two years in Fatima, interspersing with the roaming through other territories.

“ Next year we will take the festival, in a slightly smaller model, to other youth pastorals and Catholic groups. Braga, Leiria and Lisbon are interested”.

At this start, the festival will not have competitive sections. “But further ahead, we want to do a festival like MOTELX, but oriented to the Christian and Catholic theme”, concludes the organizer.