Beiruting News

THE FACE AND THE THRESHOLD
Francis: A Cinematic Genealogy of the Sacred
5–12 May
Metropolis Art Cinema – Beirut

Beirut, 04 May 2026 - Eight hundred years after the death of Saint Francis of Assisi, the Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute in Beirut, in collaboration with Metropolis Art Cinema, the Custody of the Holy Land and the National Committee for the Celebration of the Eighth Centenary of the Death of Saint Francis of Assisi, present a film series that approaches his figure not as an object of commemoration, but as a still-active site of inquiry.

Francis stands as a figure of radical innovation within his historical moment. His embrace of poverty, his rejection of prevailing structures of power, and his insistence on a renewed relationship with both the other and the natural world introduced a profound rupture into medieval culture. Yet what renders his legacy enduring is not merely its historical significance, but its continued capacity to interrogate the present calling into question the relation between spiritual aspiration and institutional form, between individual experience and communal life, and between humanity and the natural order.

Proclaimed the patron saint of Italy, Francis represents far more than a religious tradition; he constitutes one of the foundational figures of the Italian cultural imagination. His presence traverses centuries of art, literature and thought, finding in cinema a particularly fertile ground for reinterpretation.
The Face and the Threshold unfolds as a genealogy of the cinematic gaze upon the sacred. From the earliest silent films to contemporary re-readings, the works presented reveal how each era has revisited Francis in accordance with its own tensions, languages and questions.

In early cinema, the saint offers a stable visual paradigm, anchoring the image within an established iconographic tradition. With Rossellini, this equilibrium shifts: the sacred emerges within the immediacy of gesture, within communal life, and within the fragility of lived experience. In the 1960s, through the works of Pasolini and Cavani, Francis becomes a locus of critical tension, through which cinema examines the relationship between radical spiritual impulse and structures of power. Later interpretations move towards a more reflective and relational understanding, in which the Franciscan experience is conceived as shared, dynamic, and open to transformation.

The title itself encapsulates this movement. The “face” is that which appears, that which cinema renders visible; the “threshold” is the space of transition, where inner experience enters into history. Francis inhabits precisely this point: between what remains unseen and what takes form in the world, at the moment when spiritual tension becomes lived experience. In this sense, the series does not present a mere succession of films, but a sustained inquiry into the very forms through which the sacred may be represented.

At the same time, the Franciscan tradition belongs to a broader history of relations between East and West. The encounter with the Sultan, as well as the enduring presence of Franciscan communities across the Holy Land and the Mediterranean, bears witness to a legacy of dialogue that transcends confessional and cultural boundaries, and which continues to resonate with particular urgency in the present.

Screening Program
5 May - Francesco, giullare di Dio [The Flowers of St. Francis] - Roberto Rossellini (1950), 8 pm
6 May - Il poverello d’Assisi [The Poor Man of Assisi] - Enrico Guazzoni (1911), cine-concert with Mario Rahi, 7:30 pm
6 May - Frate Sole [Brother Sun] - Ugo Falena and Mario Corsi (1918), 8 pm
7 May - Uccellacci e uccellini [The Hawks and the Sparrows] - Pier Paolo Pasolini (1966), 8 pm
8 May - San Francesco d’Assisi - Liliana Cavani (1966), 6 pm
8 May - Francesco, giullare di Dio [The Flowers of St. Francis] - Roberto Rossellini (1950), 8:30 pm
9 May - Fratello Sole, Sorella Luna [Brother Sun, Sister Moon] - Franco Zeffirelli (1972), 7:30 pm
10 May - Francesco - Liliana Cavani (1989), 8 pm
11 May - Il sogno di Francesco [The Brotherhood: A Life with Saint Francis] - Renaud Fely and Arnaud Louvet (2016), 8 pm
12 May - Chiara - Susanna Nicchiarelli (2022), 8 pm


Organised by
Italian Cultural Institute of Beirut – Embassy of Italy
In collaboration with
Metropolis Art Cinema
Custody of the Holy Land 
National Committee for the Celebration of the Eighth Centenary of the Death of St. Francis of Assisi

Press Office
Italian Embassy - Beirut