Movies for Holy Week

Holy Week asks a lot of our senses. We go to long liturgies where we play speaking parts in the Gospel readings. We stand for extended periods, and go up and down on the kneeler. There’s incense and candlelight curling through dark churches, marble statues shrouded in purple, feet plunging into basins of water, and cold crucifixes pressed to our lips. 

What about when we get home? 

If your household is like mine, sometimes it’s tough to maintain a sacred tone through Holy Week. As a believer in being practical and realistic, I find it’s often most effective to sanctify our existing habits. Watching videos is already a habit, so during Holy Week, we don’t aim to shut it down, but rather harvest it for prayer and contemplation. 

Like all true art and all good stories, a great movie can be a ripe crop of deep spiritual insight. Watch these movies and shows together and in prayer—not as an escape from Holy Week, but as a way deeper in.

Holy Week movies for Catholic viewers

These movies are great for watching and contemplating alone or together with others.

1. The Passion of the Christ: Since it first premiered, this film has become an essential part of our Good Friday prayer. It’s raw and violent and that’s exactly what we need: dispelling any illusion that our salvation was abstract or comfortable. I’ve always loved the use of Aramaic language as well. There’s something deeply moving in hearing Jesus cry out in His native language. 

2. The Chosen: Season 5: The beloved Chosen series brings to life the real people whose words we read and hear proclaimed during Holy Week: Peter, John, Matthew, Mary, and Jesus. Start from the series beginning if you can. If you're short on time, episodes 6, 7, and 8 bring you deep into Jesus' last day.

3. Risen: This one may seem counterintuitive before Easter, but it presents a unique angle on the Passion story that can be helpful in “unfamiliarizing” the story. Clavius, a Roman tribune to Pontius Pilate, is tasked with investigating the missing body of a crucified Jewish troublemaker. We really enjoyed pondering the events of Holy Week from the outside perspective of someone with every reason not to believe. 

4. Paul, Apostle of Christ: Another fascinating meditation on the real lives of the Apostles. This film follows St Luke (the Gospel writer) as he secretly visits a now-elderly, imprisoned St Paul awaiting execution under Nero. It touches on the cost of witness, the martyrdom-soaked early Church, and why all of that gives credibility to the Resurrection. P.S. Luke is played by Jim Caviezel, aka Jesus from The Passion of the Christ. 

5. Triumph of the Heart: Jesus’ sacrifice at Calvary echoes through history in the lives of the saints. This beautiful film centers on the final days of St Maximilian Kolbe in an Auschwitz starvation bunker with nine other men condemned in retaliation for another prisoner’s escape. It's a real-life embrace of “This is my body given up for you.” 

6. A Hidden Life: This story moves slowly but luminously. It tells the true story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer whose martyrdom during World War II was utterly obscure as it happened. No crowds. No recognition. Just a quiet, costly refusal to betray what he knew was true.

7. Silence: Silence follows two Jesuit missionaries who travel to 17th-century Japan to minister to an underground Christian community being systematically destroyed by torture and apostasy. It's a brutal, beautiful, and deep meditation on faith and betrayal. You’ll easily connect this story to Judas, as well as the ways we justify sin in our own lives.

8. The Prince of Egypt: This stunningly beautiful film captures the weight of suffering, the hope of deliverance, and the power of trusting God. This film tells the story of Moses freeing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, which heavily foreshadows Jesus' Passion delivering us from slavery into freedom. Breathtaking animation and music make this film loved by all ages.

9. The Chronicles of Narnia: "Always winter, never Christmas" is the longtime suffering of Narnia when the story begins—until a majestic lion named Aslan returns to battle the White Witch and save a human boy who has made a terrible, selfish mistake. This entire fantasy is an allegory for salvation history. You can find some Narnia-specific questions here.

10 prompts to accompany Holy Week movies

These questions help movie-watching become a portal for deep insights. If you're on your own, watch, think, and pray (maybe journal, too). If you're with other adults, discuss over wine. If you're with a school or youth group, do a round-robin circle. And if you're watching and discussing your own kids, be cool and casual—an observation here or there, an engaging question or two, maybe a conversation starter as you're having dinner.

1. Where in the story did you most see the cost of love?

2. Is there a moment that made Jesus’ Passion feel more real to you?

3. How does the film portray suffering: as meaningless or as something that can be offered?

4. What is the difference between enduring something and freely choosing it?

5. Which character did you find yourself relating to most?

6. Is there a character whose faith you admire, or whose doubts you recognize in yourself?

7. Which moment made you think about your own faith?

8. What is something you hadn't noticed or thought about before in the story of Jesus’ Passion?

9. Is there a moment where faith survives something that should have destroyed it?

10. How does our Church today compare to the early Church or the lives of the saints?

__________

Contact me. I am a Catholic author, artist, speaker, pilgrimage leader, and travel concierge.

I'd love to collaborate with you on your next retreat, day of reflection, pilgrimage, trip, or event.

Subscribe to A Heroic Moment, my free weekly newsletter