For Christians, the month of May means much more than the exaltation of the awaited spring, the arrival of the long-awaited end of the school year or the stress prior to the end of the quarter for accountants: May is the month of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church.
If there is a woman who has influenced all human generations since the beginning of the 20th century on an artistic level, it is the Virgin Mary, as well as that famous quote in the Gospel of St. Luke: "All generations shall call me blessed." (Lk 1:48).
Films of all kinds, periods and budgets have extolled the Virgin Mary as an extraordinary woman, an example of values and virtues, an authentic influencer for our lives, always adapted to the time of the film's release.
We could talk about so many films starring Her, the New Eve, the Mother of God, although each director has wanted to focus on some specific aspect of the Virgin: the sweetness and docility of the young girl from Nazareth, the love story with St. Joseph, the relationship with her Son, Jesus, or her importance and involvement in the Passion of the Lord.
We can see in films such as Mary of Nazareth (Jean Delannoy, 1995), Natividad (Catherine Hardwicke, 2006), Maria, figlia del suo figlio (Fabrizio Costa, 2000) or Land of Mary 2013 (Juan Manuel Cotelo), that the Virgin Mary is the leitmotiv of the film, just as in other films, Maria is part of the story, as we see in The Passion of Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004), The Gospel according to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1973) or Alive, -to cite just a few examples, the last religious production released in our country, along with Sunrise in Calcutta (José María Zavala Gasset, 2021).
Marian apparitions
Another subcategory, -a particularly important facet of the influencer of the Virgin - would be the immense list of documentaries and feature films on Marian apparitions, which have been taking place for years in different parts of the world, some approved by the Church - Fatima, Lourdes, Guadalupe - and others still under study, such as those of Medjugorje or Garabandal.
The latter have given much to talk about, and this is reflected in many of the recent film productions: From Medjugorje, the most prominent film is Gospa: The Miracle of Medjugorje (Jakov Sedlar and John Sedlar, 1995), and Garabandal (Cantabria, Spain) has been the subject of more research in recent years, leading to the films Garabandal, only God knows (Brian Alexander Jackson, 2017) or Garabandal, unstoppable waterfall (Mater Spei, 2020).
On the extraordinary apparition of Our Lady at Lourdes, we have the classical Bernadette's song (Henry King, 1943) and Bernadette (Jean Delannoy, 1988), French shepherdess, mystic and nun to whom the Virgin entrusted her word and vision in 1858.
Mother of the Savior of the world
Fatima's message (John Brahm, 1952) is the indispensable film to know the apparitions of "the Lady" to the three little shepherds of Portugal, updated on several occasions, as in the recent Fatima, the last mystery (Andrés Garrigó, 2017) and how not to remember the miraculous stamping of the Image of Mary on the humble ayate of the Mexican Juan Diego, narrated in Guadalupe (Santiago Parra, 2006).
The classifications could be very diverse, but the basic idea remains: Our Lady has influenced and continues to influence our directors and our viewers for a very simple reason: she is the mother of God. Who is not interested in knowing who was the mother of the Savior of the world?
Mary was a woman of deep prayer life, she always lived close to God. She was a humble woman, that is, simple; she was generous, forgetting herself to give herself to others; she had great charity, loving and helping everyone equally; she was helpful, attending to Joseph and Jesus with love; she lived with joy; she was patient with her family; she knew how to accept God's will in her life.Is this not a true influencer?
