'Are You There God?': Secularization of Religious Narratives in Contemporary Cinema

The budding field of religion and film has almost exclusively consisted of works by religious studies scholars. The objective of this thesis is to approach religion and film from a film studies standpoint, with a focus on narrational, stylistic, and genre analysis. The films explored, Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico, 2007), Requiem (Hans-Christian Schmid, Germany, 2006), and Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols, USA, 2011), are not a part of the popular Western cinema that dominates religion and film discourses. These independent works about resurrection (Silent Light), possession (Requiem), and apocalypse (Take Shelter) secularize the religious element of their respective narratives, and as a result, there is room for doubt, hesitation, and a variety of interpretations. The ambiguous sensibility of these films is crucial to this thesis, which aims to complicate the notion of the “religious film.”