Libres

This documentary film allows us to know what leads a person in the 21st century to decide to lock themselves within four walls for the rest of their life. What is their day-to-day life like, their motivations, their connection to pure nature and exterior life, which has a lot to do with their interior life. A very good documentary that shows us the journey into the interior of men and women through the lives of people who have completely given themselves over to a cloistered life of prayer. The human being is a perfect symbiosis of body, mind and soul. For centuries, many men and women have left everything to give their lives to contemplation. This documentary manages to enter and speak, through detailed interviews, with people who rarely speak a word and places that remain closed to the world: the cloistered monasteries. Competently made by Carlos Blanco and with an enjoyable script by Javier Lorenzo, it is divided into three chapters: ¨Path¨, ¨Truth¨ and ¨Life¨.

It is a tremendously spiritual film being full of good feelings, concerning the severity of the cloistered people, their moving sacrifice and pleasant relationships between monks and nuns. It describes his simple and austere existence.

Splendid documentary that is presented as a film about the contemplative life, but what it is really about is the Christian life. The best scenes are those in which the priests and nuns appear working, praying and fulfilling their duties under pleasant religious music filled with spiritual and Gregorian chants. What counts is how the encounter with God makes life fully human. It is not a film for professionals of religious life, but for people who can no longer bear the emptiness of a materialistic life full of unfulfilled promises. In fact, many of the monks or nuns involved have ended up in the monastery after an intense life of searching in the world. This is the case of a monk of English origin, who after a difficult childhood became a great artist in New York, married an opera singer and had a daughter. But he remained dissatisfied. His brother committed suicide, as did his father and his father-in-law. His encounter with Christ revealed true Beauty to him and he decided to give his life to Him in prayer and in the work of a monastery.

I would compare ¨Libres (2023)¨ to the fictional French film ¨Des Hommes et Des Dieux¨ (2010) by Xavier Beaouvous , another religious film that invites reflection on the nuns and priests in Catholic monasteries who live a severe existence threatened by terrorists, in this case Algerian rebels.

Stunning camerawork from photographer Carlos de la Rosa, showing colorful places, he introduces us, among other locations, to the Benedictine communities of the monasteries of Leyre (Navarra) and the Valley of the Fallen (Madrid), to the community of the Cistercian nuns of the monastery of Las Huelgas (Burgos ), of the Cistercian monks of Oseira (Orense), in the oblate convent of Christ the Priest in Madrid or in the Trappist community of San Pedro de Cardeña, in Burgos and the unique experience of the Camaldolese hermits of the Yermo de Nuestra Señora de Herrera (Burgos). The film was well directed by debutant Santos Blanco and produced by Bosco Films and Variopinto Producciones.