Milja Radovic
Liturgy on the Reel
Ascesis through Film
Abstract
This article investigates representations of ascesis in film. Ascesis (askesis, ἄσκησις) 
is an ancient Christian praxis that remains an integral part of Eastern Orthodox Chris-
tianity. Its aim is the restoration of the human being into its wholeness, which in Or-
thodox theology is referred to as the growing of person from the image to the likeness 
of God. Ascesis is bound to the Divine Liturgy: it is a continuation and manifestation of 
the experience of liturgical life and its aim is the (kenotic) fulfilment of love. Ascesis is 
a constant metanoia, a precondition of reconciliation, a transformative process, and 
an artistic creation, and it is the divine inspiration that leads to salvation. This article 
examines the depictions of ascesis in two films: Ostrov (The Island, Pavel Lungin, RU 
2006) and Man of God (Yelena Popovic, GR 2021). The overarching aims of this article 
are to show (1) the ways in which asceticism is conceptualised and expressed in Or-
thodox Christianity and (2) the ways in which film expresses the inexpressible, moving 
from descriptive language to the expression of inner liturgical life by the means of film 
language. It seeks to provide novel perspectives within the field of religion and film in 
researching asceticism through film. Building upon Andrei Tarkovsky’s thought, this 
article finally suggests approaching ascesis in film through the lens of poetic cinema.
Keywords
Ascesis, Orthodox Theology, Film, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ostrov, Man of God
Biography
Milja Radovic is an international scholar in film and religion. Her primary focus has 
been on nationalism, religion, acts of citizenship, and Orthodox theology. She has 
published two monographs with Routledge, Film, Religion and Activist Citizens: An 
Ontology of Transformative Acts (2017) and Transnational Cinema and Ideology: Repre­
senting Religion, Identity and Cultural Myths (2014), and lectures internationally. She 
has also served as a jury member with Interfilm, the International Interchurch Film 
Organisation, at international film festivals (Berlin, Cottbus, Locarno, Karlovy Vary, 
Oberhausen, St Andrews).
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DOI: 10.25364/05.8:2022.1.7
Introduction
This article examines representations of Christian ascesis through film. 
One of its overarching aims is to demonstrate the ways in which film can 
express the inexpressible, moving from descriptive language to the artistic 
expression of the experience of inner liturgical life by the means of film lan-
guage. According to Andrei Tarkovsky, “The poet does not use ‘descriptions’ 
of the world; he himself has a hand in its creation.”1 The artistic expression 
of ascesis in film requires this shift, from the descriptive to the creative and 
authentic act in which personal and objective, ontological and historical 
meet. In other words, it is the auteur who begets the subject from within, 
which manifests as artistic expression. The ways in which ascesis has been 
transferred into cinematic space are examined here through the films Os-
trov (The Island, Pavel Lungin, RU 2006) and Man of God (Yelena Popovic, 
GR 2021). The films have been selected on the basis of their explicit focus on 
the theme of Christian ascesis, concentrating on the life of ascetics while at-
tempting to visually translate the ascetic praxis into artistic form. The inter-
nalisation and externalisation of the subject of ascesis makes these films an 
important source for studying the cinematic conceptualisations of ascesis 
and for understanding their unique capacity to convey ascetic experience as 
a personal one, that is, to communicate the inexpressible through an artis-
tic form of film language and at the same time to communicate the life of an 
ascetic in its whole historicity through cinematic space. The selected films 
provide a unique perspective on the ways in which ascesis is perceived and 
portrayed by contemporary filmmakers. The examination of two films does 
not limit the subject of research; on the contrary, it facilitates better focus 
on the subject. This article inevitably poses the question of what a “religious 
film” is and how we understand “transcendental style in film”. It argues that 
films depicting ascesis do not have to be of any particular genre,2 suggesting 
that scholars must find new and creative ways of examining the cinematic 
space and the ways in which film expresses transcendental experience and 
Christian praxis. The research on ascesis reveals the potentiality of cinema, 
as “the most truthful art form”, as a meta-language,3 to express “the state 
1 Tarkovsky 1989, 42.
2 The true cinema image is built upon the destruction of genre, upon conflict with it. For 
further reading, see Tarkovsky 1989, 150.
3 Tarkovsky 1989, 40.
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of mind” both of those represented and of those who create, imparting 
themselves into their creation.4
The ways in which ascesis of the Orthodox Christian tradition has been 
expressed through film and via film language is a subject that has not yet 
been examined adequately in scholarly research on religion and film. The 
well-known and much written about film Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 
USSR 1966) provides one of the most insightful cinematic expressions of 
ascesis, yet the ways ascesis is expressed in the film have not been studied. 
Although Tarkovsky’s film is not analysed in this article, his work serves as 
a point of reference for investigating this topic further. Paul Schrader made 
a major impact in film criticism by developing a specific approach to film 
art, which is important for scholars working in the field of religion and film, 
investigating how the transcendent, the holy, or the inexpressible is trans-
ferred into the cinematic space. Schrader finds it useful in film criticism 
to employ the term “transcendental style”, as opposed to “religious film”,5 
and applies this term for analysing films such as those of Yasujirō Ozu, Carl 
Theodor Dreyer, and Robert Bresson.6 Schrader argues that “the function of 
transcendental art is […] to express the Holy itself”7 and precisely because 
“style” is “the way to approach the Transcendent”,8 it can be analysed. Al-
though Schrader did not engage with the Orthodox Christian tradition, his 
theory is important for furthering research in theology and film within this 
specific religious tradition. Schrader argues that the “more a work of art 
can successfully incorporate sparse means within an abundant society, the 
nearer it approaches its transcendental ‘end’.”9 
What for Schrader is a “miracle”, when “cinema can create a style of 
confrontation”,10 for Tarkovsky, one could argue, is the cinema of poetry, 
which he continuously expressed through his own opus. In that sense, 
4 Tarkovsky 1989, 41.
5 Schrader 2018, 37.
6 Schrader 2018, 37.
7 Schrader 2018, 39.
8 Schrader 2018, 35.
9 Schrader 2018, 35.
10 The moment of confrontation can only occur if at the decisive moment the abundant 
means have lost their power. If the “miracle” can be seen in any humanistic tradition, 
psychological or sociological, the viewer will avoid a confrontation with the transcendent. 
Schrader 2018, 35.
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their understanding of the ways in which cinema art connects life and 
the transcendent is perhaps one of the most striking similarities between 
Schrader and Tarkovsky, even a meeting point. Schrader’s understanding 
of transcendental style and Tarkovsky’s cinema of poetry are important 
for further theorisation and understanding of asceticism and film from the 
perspective of Orthodox Christian theology. The role of the artist in the cre-
ative process whereby inner life is expressed in external circumstances as 
the search for the truth is related to time (as cinema itself is), but it is also 
surrounded by the “timeless time” – that of the liturgy, which starts here 
but reflects eternity, the Holy itself.
For Schrader the transcendental style, although just a style, “can bring 
us nearer to that silence, that invisible image, in which the parallel lines of 
religion and art meet and interpenetrate”.11 For Tarkovsky, artistic creation 
is an authentic act which only humankind, created in the image of God, 
possesses. In Orthodox tradition, art was not a substitute but an expression 
of the inexpressible that arises from an authentic experience of humankind 
lifted to the divine sphere, a foretaste and transformative image of theosis, 
both historical and eschatological reality.
Schrader further argues that many film directors “have forged a remarka-
bly similar form” which “was not determined by their personalities, culture”, 
but “is the result of two universal contingencies: the desire to express the 
Transcendent in art and the nature of the film medium”.12 This is what gives 
the transcendental style, according to Schrader, its universality. This article 
argues that the personality of the auteur, and frequently also the cultural 
framework,13 shapes the artistic form and expression. Tarkovsky reminds us 
that “unless there is an organic link between the subjective impressions of the 
author and his objective representation of reality, he will not achieve even su-
perficial credibility, let alone authenticity and inner truth”.14 This article claims 
that rather than “the desire to express the Transcendent”, it is the experience of 
life – “being absorbed into God”15 – that informs the degrees and ways in which 
11 Schrader 2018, 35.
12 Schrader 2018, 35.
13 Andrei Tarkovsky represents both the rule and the exception: while Andrei Rublev was 
made at a time of persecution of religion during the Soviet era (in this sense it is in 
principle not shaped by its immediate cultural framework), the film is informed by rich 
Russian Orthodox tradition and spirituality.
14 Tarkovsky 1989, 21.
15 On being absorbed into God, see Tarkovsky 1989, 240.
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that experience will be expressed through art. This art, in the case of Orthodox 
ascetic art, has its own tradition, which shapes yet does not replicate itself.
Only in this existential sense can true artistic creation be a form of sac-
rifice16 and not a desire for self-expression. It is through this sacrifice of self 
that the divine can be found. Tarkovsky compares artistic creation to “a 
confession […] an unconscious act that none the less reflects the true mean-
ing of life—love and sacrifice”. It is closest to the highest forms of poetry.17 
For Tarkovsky poetic cinema is “the observation of the phenomenon passing 
through time”,18 as cinema has like no other art “force, precision and stark-
ness with which it conveys awareness of facts and aesthetic structures 
existing and changing within time”.19 Poetic cinema is not how you “shoot 
something”, it is not sacrificing “concrete, living, emotional content”20 
for the sake of convention, for the “purity of cinema” lies precisely in the 
“capacity of the images to express a specific, unique, actual fact”.21 Infinity 
cannot be described or captured, but it can be apprehended “in faith and 
through the creative act”.22 Thus, poetic cinema is important as it creates 
an authentic cinematic space by means of poetic linkage in which an honest 
disposition of the heart in moving towards God with all its subtlety is dis-
closed by film language. Poetic linkages through which “the poetic design of 
being” can be glimpsed “beyond the limitations of coherent logic, and con-
veying the deep complexity and truth of impalpable connections and hidden 
phenomena of life”.23 If the language of the soul is the language of love, it 
can only be expressed through poetry.
The representation of ascesis for what it is through film must involve 
both faith and the creative approach, where poetry serves in expressing 
the most inner experience of life in specific time. Depicting ascesis from 
the outside, that is, projecting the outsider’s gaze onto something that is in 
16 Tarkovsky 1989, 40.
17 Tarkovsky 1989, 239.
18 Tarkovsky 1989, 66.
19 Tarkovsky criticised “pseudo-poetic cinema” and its “empty symbolism” which involves 
“breaking off contact with fact and with time realism, and makes for preciousness and 
affectation”, Tarkovsky 1989, 68–69.
20 Tarkovsky 1989, 69.
21 Mise-en-scene, that is, “the disposition and movement of selected objects in relation 
to the area of the frame”, in poetic cinema arises from the “psychological state of the 
characters”, Tarkovsky 1989, 73–74.
22 Tarkovsky 1989, 39.
23 Tarkovsky 1989, 21.
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itself intangible, would not merely result in a cliché, but would also degrade 
both cinematic potential and human creativity. This does not mean that the 
filmmaker is an ascetic in a literal sense, but rather that the approach to the 
subject contains ascetic quality so to speak, such as self-sacrifice, sincerity 
in expression, or going beyond the worship of oneself in order to point to 
the truth, which art in its highest form can express. Only then, when cine-
matic space reflects the sincere relation of the auteur to the subject, will 
this shape the relationships within the filmic frame, which receive a poetic 
form. In other words, poetic expression is the result of an authentic human 
act of creation.
Tarkovsky showed how cinema works as a “sculpting in time”, and while 
scholars mistook Tarkovsky’s quest in time to be an end in itself,24 they did not 
discern the theology which informs the content of Tarkovsky’s films and more 
importantly how the specific theological tradition informs the film language.
In analysing two films which are rooted in the same Orthodox Christian 
artistic tradition within which Tarkovsky begot his Andrei Rublev, this arti-
cle aims to show (1) the ways in which asceticism is conceptualised and ex-
pressed in Orthodox Christianity, and (2) the ways in which this is conveyed 
through film and by means of film language. In doing so, its author hopes to 
offer novel perspectives on ascesis and its transformative dimension, which 
can perhaps be best expressed through film if we understand film art as the 
poetic quest for the truth. “The meaning of religious truth is hope”25 and 
when “an artist can discern the lines of the poetic design of being […] he is 
capable of going beyond the limitations of coherent logic, and conveying 
truth of the impalpable connections and hidden phenomena of life”.26 Poet-
ry27 is closest to prayer. Thus, building upon Tarkovsky’s thought, this article 
suggests ascesis in film be considered through the lens of poetic cinema.
On Ascesis
Before we turn to ascesis in the films, it is useful to clarify what ascesis is 
within Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. Ascesis is the heart of Christian 
life and the continuation of the liturgical event. Ascesis (askesis, ἄσκησις) in 
24 Schrader 2018.
25 Tarkovsky 1989, 43.
26 Tarkovsky 1989, 21.
27 ποίησις – to bring something into being; ποιεῖν – to make, to create.
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the literal sense means training (ἀσκέω, I train) and it is a living praxis of Or-
thodox Christianity. As such ascesis is both an internal and external event, 
a personal and historical occurrence. Ascetic praxis is a manifestation of 
continuous repentance – metanoia. Ascesis is praxis of the hesychastic mo-
nastic life, but it also extends beyond monasticism.28 In that sense, ascesis 
is not a practice reserved for a few, as it is often misconceived, or one of 
the ways of acting in the world; it is a way of existence that integrates all 
aspects of human life and as such it spreads to all humanity. It is at the core 
of the Christian life and the life of the Church. Ascetic life is not a life of 
self-punishment or despair, as it is often wrongly understood, but the life 
of sorrowful joy which comes from kenotic humility. It is living to fulfil the 
commandment of love for the neighbour and love for the enemy, and this 
can be achieved only through humbleness and humility.29 Thus, ascesis is 
not a rejection of humanity and the world, but the renunciation of the ways 
of this world, which is the beginning of repentance. Ascesis is the theology 
of experience rooted in hesychastic prayer and continuous metanoia.
Hesychastic prayer is neither an artistic creation nor scientific inves-
tigation; it is neither philosophic research and speculation nor abstract 
intellectual theology.30 An ascetic strives to live Christ’s commandments, 
centralising Christ in the centre of their heart. Prayer transforms the pur-
pose of life, transferring one’s heart and nous from temporal to eternal. 
The fruit of prayer is knowledge of oneself and through that of the whole of 
humankind, which produces weeping over the state of humankind, which is 
lifeless without God, but also gives freedom that is outside human bounda-
ries. It is through metanoia and kenotic prayer that the gift of discernment 
between good and evil and the gift of contemplation of divine reality as the 
grace of God descend upon the ascetic. Ascesis is the manifestation of faith 
through praxis whose fruits are fruits of love, as God is Love. It is through 
the synergy of God’s act of grace and humankind’s freedom to respond to 
God’s call that ascesis manifests as transformative power – in love for the 
enemy and in the love for God, which precedes all forms of love. This love 
that manifests in ascetic life is not love out of obligation, a moral act, and 
contains no “ethical must”, it is “love because of ontological affinity”.31 The 
28 1 Cor. 9:24–27 points out the importance of training, the roots of ascesis.
29 Sophrony 1991, 138.
30 Sophrony 1991, 156–157.
31 Zizioulas 2004, 8–11.
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prayer of the heart, hesychastic prayer, is central to ascetic life, for the as-
cetic struggle is in the heart. Only once the heart is enlarged is it possible 
to experience the ontological love for the enemy and ontological freedom. 
Ascesis aims for the restoration of the human being as a whole, bringing the 
potentiality of a person, the image of God, into its fullness – the likeness of 
God. Acquiring a true hypostasis is, however, not possible merely by human 
effort; it is possible only by the grace of the True Person of Christ. Ascesis is 
inseparable from liturgical life and is its most profound expression. Liturgy 
is a unique and authentic event as an act of God in which humankind par-
ticipates. It is the thanksgiving of people (λᾱός). Although the liturgy may 
appear to be something that repeats and is based on specific rules, it is not 
a repetitive performance. Every liturgy is a unique event, a union between 
God and humankind that permeates the whole human life. Hence, ascesis 
cannot be reduced to “the activity of thought” or to “intellectual conform-
ity”.32 Ascesis is a continuation of participation in the Divine Liturgy, and the 
Divine Liturgy surpasses space and time, the spatio-temporal dimension, 
remaining at the same time a historical occurrence for it takes place in con-
crete historical time and space.
The transformative dimension of ascetic-liturgical experience and ascetic 
podvig has been expressed through ascetic art, iconography, and poetry. 
The Orthodox iconographic tradition which adorns the spaces of liturgical 
worship is both the story of ascesis and the space of ascesis. The icon in 
Orthodox theology is sacred; it is a window onto eternity, mystically rep-
resenting Christ – the Person par excellence – the transfigured saints and 
the world to come. The icon depicts God because God became man; it rep-
resents the Person and a personal relationship, and in that sense the icon 
is meta-historical. It is important to say that the icon refers to another, 
not to itself, to the relationship between persons (God and humankind), to 
the Church itself. “The Church becomes a real depiction of the Kingdom of 
God, leading us to the Divine Eucharist, which St Maximus the Confessor 
described as the image or Icon of the Kingdom.”33 Furthermore, “when an 
image becomes an Icon, it no longer refers to itself anymore – to its ephem-
eral existence; rather, it refers beyond itself: to something beyond this cor-
rupted world”.34
32 See Foucault in McWhorter 1992, 243; 252.
33 Bishop Maxim 2010.
34 Bishop Maxim 2010.
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Poetry as the highest form of expression gives a foretaste of the eter-
nal, of that which cannot be described, preparing, inspiring, and impart-
ing to the soul the taste of communion in God’s love, beginning here and 
stretching to the age to come. Hence, prayer is often expressed through 
hymnography and supplication, forming an integral part of liturgical life. 
Music equally forms a constitutive part of liturgical life: hymns and prayers, 
like the whole Divine Liturgy, are sung. All these expressions do not aim 
to satisfy humankind’s emotional or psychological needs and desires or to 
make an impression, but seek rather to inspire and invite humankind onto 
the narrow path of sorrowful joy, the ascetic liturgical life in Christ. Ascesis 
reveals that being is being-in-communion and that “the purpose of life is 
Love”.35 This love is the divine imprint in the being that is the image of God.
Ascesis is thus a means and not the goal. The goal of ascesis is the sal-
vation of humankind, the reconfiguration of the distorted human being 
unique in its occurrence, the restoration of the human being into person, 
that is, into the likeness of God. Ascesis is the way of life which harmonis-
es the whole human being. Ascesis in Orthodox Christianity as expressed 
through art, its iconography, poetry, and music is the fruit of the inner 
experience of ascetic-liturgical life. In what ways and to what extent this 
can be transferred into film is the subject of the next part of this article. 
The films examined here approach ascesis as both an internal and external 
event. The internalisation and externalisation of liturgical-ascetic life by the 
means of film language and also depictions of the liturgical life of metanoia 
and kenotic prayer will be considered further.
Ostrov
The film Ostrov, by Pavel Lungin, which received much international atten-
tion, is one of the first films made in post-Soviet Russia that focus explicitly 
on ascetic life in Orthodox Christianity. Through his film, Lungin explores 
ascesis as liturgical life, relying upon his own tradition and the experience 
of Orthodoxy, following a Dostoevskyian quest in discerning good from evil, 
truth from lie, virtue from crime.
The film concentrates on the life of Father Anatoly, a monk who lives in a 
small monastery on an island somewhere in the Arctic. Prior to becoming a 
35 Sophrony 1991, 159.
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monk, as the film narrates, he was a sailor who murdered his officer-in-com-
mand, Tikhon, forced to do so by German soldiers in 1942. After ship and har-
bour were destroyed by the Germans, the future monk, who had been blown 
out to sea by the explosion, was saved by monks. The film continues with 
the life of Father Anatoly, thirty-four years later, in the monastery on an is-
land. Father Anatoly lives in constant repentance because of his sin, praying 
for the soul of Tikhon. His way of being, which is embedded in the monastic 
life of opštežiće,36 is somewhat distinct from the rest of the brotherhood: 
the sick, the abandoned, the suffering all come by boat to Father Anatoly 
for help, advice, or healing. For this reason, Father Anatoly is challenged by 
Father Jov, who questions his lifestyle, his eccentric behaviour, and his rela-
tionship with the people, but nevertheless at the end is conquered by love 
for Father Anatoly. Father Anatoly heals the sick and prophesises – even his 
own death. Father Anatoly finally discovers that captain Tikhon, for whose 
soul he prayed for more than three decades, is alive. Father Anatoly heals 
Tikhon’s possessed daughter, after which he dies peacefully.
The film focuses on the personality of Father Anatoly and is divided ac-
cording to the major events on the island. His character, portrayed at times 
as eccentric and at other times as simple-minded, is perhaps the reason 
why he has been understood as the classic cinematic figure of a “holy fool”, 
“a fool for Christ” or jurodivi.37 Exploring the concept of the holy fool in Or-
thodoxy and particularly in Russian tradition,38 Alina Birzache builds upon 
G. P. Fedotov in considering jurodstvo as “the most radical form of Christian 
kenoticism”.39 Birzache’s research is important for understanding specific 
manifestations of asceticism in Russian Orthodoxy and their relational as-
pects both for society and for Christianity in the East.40
While in his film Lungin may draw upon the praxis of jurodstvo, he does so 
only to the extent required by the story. Jurodstvo is not employed merely for 
36 Coenobitic life – κοινωνία (κοινός): joint participation, a life in the monastic community.
37 “The film depicts a traditional conduct of a fool in Christ […] He provokes sinners to repent. 
He provokes the other monks, claiming that they ought to fully give themselves to Christ 
and have no other aspirations”, Bodin 2011, 3.
38 The first Russian holy fool – iurodstvo – is considered to be Saint Isaak Zatvornik in the 11th 
century, a hermit of the Monastery of the Caves at Kiev, but the phenomenon reached a 
climax in the sixteenth century. Birzache 2012, 61.
39 Birzache 2012, 21.
40 Jurodstvo has kenotic character but also a social role, reminding both monastics and laity 
that God cannot be constrained by human factors, by a set of rules. See Birzache 2012.
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Fig. 1: Realisation af ter the 
murder: future monk, Father 
Anatoly, stares at the Nazi 
flag. Film still, Ostrov (The 
Island, Pavel Lungin, RU 2006), 
00:08:58.
Fig. 2: The Island of repentance: 
the darkness is replaced by 
light. The whiteness of the 
Monastery on the deserted 
island where Father Anatoly 
starts his monastic life. Film 
still, Ostrov (The Island, Pavel 
Lungin, RU 2006), 00:11:17.
the sake of representation of Russian Orthodoxy or for a catechetical lesson 
for people returning to their roots via film in a religiously awakened Russia. 
On the contrary, it is a means of expressing deep repentance, or metanoia, 
through kenotic prayer. Just as jurodstvo in Russia was only a means, not an 
end, and directed to something bigger, Lungin points to what is beyond the 
form of the holy fool: he investigates the possibility of a constant state of re-
pentance through kenotic prayer. In that sense he uses a well-known praxis 
of Russian Orthodoxy not as illustration but for contemplation.
Lungin opens his film with darkness and a sense of oppression, which the 
blinding interrogation-like lights behind the German soldiers suggest (fig. 1). 
In these several minutes of darkness the whole drama of human existence 
takes place. A sailor, an ordinary man who is loading coal onto a ship, will 
murder his captain in order to save his own life. The sailor will become Fa-
ther Anatoly, metaphorically losing his own life through repentance. The site 
of the murder, close to the monastery, is a reminder of his sin. However, the 
dark mood does not prevail in the rest of the film, indicating that repentance 
has begun (fig. 2). The monastery and landscape are surrounded by water 
and covered in ice and snow, giving brightness to the film. Lungin creates a 
space that seems both isolated and approachable, cold and warm – an ascet-
ic space similar to that of the deserts where ascetics of the past lived, a space 
where the inner battle between good and evil is unceasing. This space is not 
a space of austerity but rather a space of sincerity and freedom, as the open 
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Fig. 3: Father Anatoly lies on the 
ground praying, “Lord Jesus  
Christ, Son of God, have mercy 
on me the sinner”. Film still, 
Ostrov (The Island, Pavel 
Lungin, RU 2006), 00:02:12.
space and landscape visually communicate. The coldness of snow is soothed 
with constant prayer, while the camera on Father Anatoly’s moving feet or 
on him lying on the ground personalises the space, bringing in warmth to a 
space which otherwise could be perceived as cold (fig. 3). He is entrenched 
in the natural world; his proximity to the earth shows both the mindfulness 
of death and the beauty of life in prayer. The shots of Father Anatoly in his 
cell are never completely dark; light always penetrates the space.
Father Anatoly’s podvig is deeply personal for his relationship with God is 
personal. This personal relationship with God is central to the character and 
the film. The film unfolds the life of Father Anatoly through dynamic shifts 
between a steady slow pace and abrupt intrusions that show us the differ-
ent ways in which visits touch his life. Through continuous shifts between 
still and abrupt, his personality and his life of repentance are revealed grad-
ually, almost at the intimate level. He is portrayed as a hidden ascetic who 
continues to dig and load coal (this time for the monastery) and hides even 
from his superior (the abbot) that he sleeps on the coal. The burning coal, 
intertwined with the hesychastic prayer, symbolises the burning of his sin. 
The camera-eye is both an observer and a participant and is the only witness 
of what cannot be seen by others. 
Further, Father Anatoly’s relationship with the lay people, as well as with 
the monks, is both gentle and violent, indicating eccentricity or jurodstvo: 
for instance, he pretends that he is not the clairvoyant Father Anatoly of 
whom the people have heard; he shouts at a woman who asks him for his 
blessing for an abortion; he reproaches a widow and a mother for their hesi-
tation to perform God’s will to the end; and he has an outburst at the abbot 
for his attachment to earthly things, burning his boots and blanket.
While the actions of the main character may appear externally difficult, 
his humour, spontaneity, and constant prayer reveal that what appears diffi-
cult is light. Lungin’s framing of Father Anatoly, the main character, is often 
decentralised from both specific frames and whole sequences; sometimes 
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he is with the people, sometimes with the monks, and sometimes alone 
doing work or praying on his island far off from the monastery. In this way 
Lungin avoids creating a spectacle of the character of Father Anatoly and en-
ables us to see how the life of prayer flows in the small monastic community 
of which he is a part.
In between the major events, the film shows Father Anatoly’s life of 
prayer, and it is prayer which links the events. In taking this approach Lungin 
shows that it is not a mere sense of guilt that drives his character into the 
monastic life, but that it is through his crime that the terrible knowledge of 
his own fall emerges, and through this knowledge he can see the fallen state 
of the whole world. Coming to see himself as nobody – a person capable of 
committing a murder – enables him to put God and the “deceased” Tikhon 
in the centre of his heart. This is achieved through his life of kenotic prayer 
and humbleness, despite his seemingly foolish outbursts. Lungin’s percep-
tions and cinematic expressions of ascesis make the film an organic event 
of metanoia and kenotic prayer. The liturgy is depicted throughout the film, 
with the short sequences of services or the sound of monastic chanting in 
the background intertwined with continuous prayer, natural sounds, and 
action – such as Father Anatoly’s jumping into the cold water to bring back 
a sick child – indicating the permeation of liturgical life and continuous me-
tanoia. Prayer is a thread woven through the fabric of the whole film.
The camera work is dynamic and constantly changes. The space is not 
symmetrical; but asymmetry, as in the scene with the liturgy, conveys not a 
lack of order but rather the organic way in which order arises, without the 
need for formalist, that is, surface expressions of piety. External and internal 
are contrasted: what externally seems difficult, such as the life of Father 
Anatoly, the film shows as internally light, and what internally is difficult, 
such as the burden of sin, is externally expressed and transformed through 
prayer, such as in the scene in which a possessed woman is cured. The film 
questions and transforms our own view: the camera-eye communicates 
that what is seen by the eye is not always accurate and that which is not 
seen, what remains hidden, is the truth. Lungin thus thematises asceticism 
not solely through the story of the main character but also through film lan-
guage: his framing, camera, and sound work in composition bring forward 
the inner perspective on metanoia and kenosis, the podvig of liturgical life. 
The island is both a symbolic and a real space, with the whiteness of the 
snow indicating both coldness and warmth, and the surrounding sea giving 
the sense of the Church as an island of salvation.
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Fig. 4: Close-up of Saint 
Nektarios saying the ascetic 
prayer of the heart. Man of  
God (Yelena Popovic, GR 2021).  
Photograph courtesy of 
Yelena Popovic and Simeon 
Entertainment.
MAN OF GOD
The film Man of God, directed by Yelena Popovic, focuses on the life of 
ascetic and bishop Saint Nektarios of Aegina (1846–1920). It is – in terms of 
production and targeted audience – one of the major contemporary films 
to centralise asceticism and show its significance for human life. Popovic 
decided to make this film after reading a life of Saint Nektarios; seized by 
the life of the saint and able to relate to the problems he experienced, she 
started the journey of constructing the story, which would receive a whole 
new form on the reel. Popovic understood that “the truth cannot be dram-
atised”.41 She describes her approach as follows: “I made this film from the 
inside out. That was the main focus.”42 With an intimate relation to the 
theme and an intuitive approach in creating the film, Popovic did not merely 
reconstruct the life of an exceptional person43 but instead created an expe-
rience of his life, enabling the audience to find and follow the poetic thread 
in discovering “the way of the ascetic”.44
Popovic opens her film with a prayer, peacefully, from within, introducing 
us to the inner state of its main character (fig. 4). The film follows the life of 
Saint Nektarios, but Popovic, although faithful to biographical facts, does 
not take a descriptive or catechistic approach. Instead, she unfolds the life 
41 Popovic 2021.
42 Popovic 2021.
43 See, for example, the biographical drama Gandhi (Richard Attenborough, GB/IN/USA/ZA 
1982).
44 For further reading, see Colliander 1985.
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of Saint Nektarios intimately, as something that is happening here and now, 
starting with the major disruptive event that will have greatest impact on 
the saint’s life. The film starts in 1890 in Egypt, where Saint Nektarios was 
consecrated the metropolitan bishop of Pentapolis by the Ecumenical Patri-
arch of Constantinople, later the Greek Patriarch of Alexandria, Sophronius 
IV. The beginning of the film relates the beginning of the trials of Saint Nek-
tarios, as he is about to be expelled from his position as the result of false 
accusations, which were never presented to him openly. In his words, he is 
“sentenced without a crime”. Even the Patriarch, his spiritual father, does 
not want to see him. Although popular among the people, he leaves Egypt for 
Greece, only to find that the jealousy and accusations in Egypt follow him. 
In Greece his persecution continues: unable to continue his episcopal office, 
he struggles to find any job or service. As the Archbishop of Athens refuses 
to see him, he seeks a placement from the Ministry of Religion, where he is 
not rejected outright but receives a bureaucratic response – is not a Greek 
citizen. He therefore becomes the man who will be known as the travelling 
hierarch. The ministry appoints him as an ordinary preacher in the diocese 
of Vitineia and Euboea, but met by hostility from locals inspired by the gos-
sip from Alexandria, he resigns and returns to Athens. People who know him 
find no justification for the slandering of this humble man and draw closer 
to him. The reputation he earns on his own merits is confronted by the 
animosity of others, which follows him to the end. He is appointed dean at 
the Rizarios Seminary in Athens, where rumours and jealousy continue, but 
he also gains the love and respect of many. During this whole time, he lives 
a life of asceticism and ceaseless prayer, ministering to the poor and sick. 
Because of his spiritual daughters and his age, he seeks to establish a female 
monastery in Aegina, to which he retires from the seminary in 1908. Howev-
er, the monastery, in spite the promises of some bishops, is not recognised 
by the Synod, and his trials continue – his monastery is maliciously accused 
and the nuns interrogated. Despite all these trials, Saint Nektarios contin-
ues to live the ascetic life of podvig, enduring all the slander that befalls him. 
The monastery’s spiritual life blossoms, as does the love of people for him. 
In his final years, he is hospitalised by illness, tended by nuns and medical 
staff who witness his compassion and miracles for the poor and suffering 
in the hospital. Saint Nektarios died on 8 November 1920. At the time of his 
death, a man paralysed for many years was healed. At this point, the hand 
we have seen throughout the film finishes writing and the camera moves 
out to reveal the bigger picture, the apology of the Patriarchate to the saint. 
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Fig. 5: The ‘unjust council’ plotting against Saint Nektarios, the high camera angle indicating that 
God is watching Man of God (Yelena Popovic, GR 2021). Photograph courtesy of Yelena Popovic 
and Simeon Entertainment.
The image of the writing hand is woven into the visual fabric of the film and 
anticipates what we already understand at the end: “Blessed are they who 
are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” (Matt. 5:10, NIV).
Yelena Popovic decided to focus on the crucial events in the life of Saint 
Nektarios, breathing into the film his life of prayer. Popovic achieves a con-
trast between the way of the world and the way of the ascetic. She offers 
the authentic experience of the ascetic life of a man in impossible circum-
stances. The way in which the film is shot and its imagery serve the purpose 
of the story and are never exaggerated. The opening sequence shows a line 
of icons before which the saint bows, doing metanoia, moves to the hand-
writing, and then to an Arab man who addresses Saint Nektarios saying that 
he was healed because of the saint’s prayers. We see the saint’s face for the 
first time in the daylight as he humbly replies, “He heard your prayers.” The 
film almost abruptly moves on to the gathering of the hierarchs who discuss 
Saint Nektarios. They sit in the dark, shot from a high angle, and we hear 
the plotting of his opponents, who find him “a fanatic” and “a man close to 
streets and harlots” (fig. 5).
The scene with the Patriarch Sophronios, before whom the accusations 
against Saint Nekatrios are brought, is also shot from a high angle in the 
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dark. The chanting Kirie Elesion is heard in the scene where Saint Nekatrios 
is serving in the church, with people approaching him, offering their sup-
port in disbelief. The scene signals his peacefulness and the storm that is 
about to start. The film takes us then on the journey to Greece, where Saint 
Nekatrios, denied access to church officials, sits in the street with a beggar. 
We see him and the beggar exchanging warm words. When the hierarchs 
pass by, their coats cover the sight of the two men sitting on the ground. 
Before he leaves, Saint Nektarios gives his shoes to the beggar. The scene 
establishes a quiet understanding between the saint and the poor man, 
while the framing of the mantels reinforces the beggar’s words that the 
hierarchs do not seem to care about him (just as they do not seem to care 
about the saint). The character of Saint Nektarios is expressed through his 
acts, paying for the poor boy’s treatment in the hospital (for which he pays), 
secretly taking the place of the seminary’s janitor when he falls ill, planting 
and working with his hands, putting his hands gently on people to console 
them, and giving his small salary for the sick and the poor, for the renewal 
of the seminary’s church and finally for the monastery in Aegina.
While the actor Aris Servetalis as Saint Nektarios has a major role in 
transmitting and transcending the prayerful disposition and peace of the 
character, it is the filmmaker who reveals the significance of the ascetic 
prayer of Saint Nekatrios, weaving it in between the crucial events that 
will determine his whole life. “Have mercy O Lord on the sick, and poor, 
have mercy on those who hate me and let them not perish because of me 
the sinner.” In response to new persecutions, Saint Nekatrios replies, “God 
bless them.” His every prayer in the film is different and each time is shot 
in a different way, revealing ascetic prayer as dynamic, as an always new, 
authentic conversation with God. The prayer “Please give me the strength 
to do what is right, what is your will” followed by metanoias is contrasted 
with the shouts of men in his small parish on Euboea. The men surround 
him, their hands and bodies jeering at him with anger, and as they shout 
their voices are muffled and appear like a collective howling. The camera 
entrenched among the men circles around them, distorting the focus and 
the geometrical sense of space. By contrast Saint Nektarios stands calmly 
and speaks to them with an imploring voice in which we can clearly make 
out his preaching. The short scene ends with a shot from inside the altar in 
which the top of the wall makes up the upper half of the frame while in the 
lower half we see Saint Nektarios in the centre, with the men surrounding 
him (fig. 6).
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Fig. 6: Saint Nektarios preaching while the villagers protest, as the slander continues in Greece. 
Man of God (Yelena Popovic, GR 2021). Photograph courtesy of Yelena Popovic and Simeon 
Entertainment.
The scene conveys the bitter experience of slander. Through the camer-
awork and the sound Popovic confronts different realities: the reality of this 
world as temporary and passing, just like the generic noise worldliness pro-
duces, and the reality which has eternal meaning, eternal value, the reality of 
God, in which the main character remains unshaken. The scene is framed as a 
response to his inner prayer, his desire to do what is right. The ascetic is por-
trayed with his inner tribulations, well summarised in one sentence of prayer: 
“What have I done? What did they tell him [the Patriarch of Alexandria]? 
Please Lord give me a chance to speak to him.” In the seminary, in between 
the events that take place there, Saint Nektarios is shown pronouncing the 
major ascetic prayer “Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me the sinner.”
The film conveys asceticism aesthetically through poetic expression: the 
scenes flow, connecting time and space, the shots are non-symmetrical, and 
rather iconic; the camera focalises through and often intimately follows the 
main character; the camera changes as the prayer changes and is often po-
sitioned in unusual high angles, giving the impression that God is observing 
all the events and people. The eyes of the camera thus frequently resemble 
the eyes of Christ as represented iconographically in the cupola of Orthodox 
churches.
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Fig. 7: The Athonites pray for the world: Saint Nektarios in one of the ascetic caves in Athos. 
Man of God (Yelena Popovic, GR 2021). Photograph courtesy of Yelena Popovic and Simeon 
Entertainment.
The scene of the saint traveling, first from the city through the forests 
and then to the cave of Mount Athos, where with a fellow monk he pros-
tates himself in noetic prayer, connects spaces in a poetic way, indicating 
that the saint enters from the wider world (the landscape) into what is es-
sential (the cave), from the mind to the heart (fig. 7). The physical flow and 
continuity of the composition and camera movement reflect the spiritual 
flow and continuity which characterise the inner life of prayer – the depth 
of the cave that frames the monks shows the depth of the inner heart of 
Saint Nektarios. The scene of prayer for a sick student, underlined by the 
Byzantine chanting of Kirie Eleison, shows Saint Nektarios with his students 
on their knees in prayer, shot from above within the doors of the altar, with 
Saint Nektarios’s hands raised and eyes looking up, then it moves to a close-
up of his face and the flower he is cultivating when news is received that 
the boy has been cured. The scene reveals the connection between ascetic 
prayer and human life, the prayer of supplication and the fruit brought forth 
by love well captured in the image of the flower. The film also shows people 
of different age, sex, and background reading his writing on the Mother of 
God, thus revealing the impact of prayer and truth on the lives of many, 
regardless of their social background.
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The director uses mirroring shots to connect spaces, but she also con-
trasts this with more abrupt montage, giving a sense of both the continuity 
of ascetic life and the tension that surrounds the ascetic. The light in the 
dark spaces, which often comes from behind and shines onto Saint Nekta-
rios, is the same light that one of the protagonists, the blind girl Xenia, who 
will become a nun, spiritually anticipates. The camera conveys this light, 
which is measured, non-intrusive, inducing beauty into the characters’ 
simplicity. Shots depicting Saint Nektarios carrying stones on his back past 
the native villagers on the island of Aegina and a wide shot of him walking 
across an open field, where the sky reflects the earth in composition with 
the sun shining through the dark clouds, give a sense of moving forward, 
in a small reflection of the inner rays which shine upon the person who al-
though surrounded by darkness perseveres in living in God.
Scenes of poetic beauty and prayer are followed by scenes of interroga-
tion: his persecution culminates in a scene of open violence, as the police 
prosecutor enters with a soldier, first verbally and then physically attacking 
the now elderly Bishop Nektarios, hitting him in the face, which throws him 
off his chair onto the ground. They then ransack the monastery, breaking fur-
niture, stripping rooms clean, and even mercilessly throwing an elderly debil-
itated nun off her bed onto the floor. The camera primarily tracks characters 
but to different effects: first the policemen, with whom instability and asym-
metry are associated, and then the saint, who stoically follows the violence 
around him. The tracking shot visualises his painful gaze and thus affects us. 
The director creates a circular motion in space, moving among and around 
the nuns and Saint Nektarios during the police invasion of the monastery. 
The movement of the camera and the stability of the standing nuns and their 
bishop in the yard indicate an inner peace that contrasts with the violence. 
The drunkard cries out that he knows his sin “represents the tragic and 
fallen state of the humanity who our Lord loves and calls to repentance”.45 
The drunkard is aware of his sin, unlike the “pharisees, those who believe 
they are righteous”.46 “The main ingredient for repentance is honesty”, and 
Saint Nektarios “has the sensitivity and humility not to judge this person but 
to take in what he is saying”.47 The sound, the movement of the camera, and 
the low angle with the close-up of Saint Nektarios, through whom we gaze 
45 Popovic 2021.
46 Popovic 2021.
47 Popovic 2021.
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Fig. 8: The paralysed man in the 
hospital lying in the room with 
Saint Nektarios. Man of God 
(Yelena Popovic, GR 2021). 
Photograph courtesy of 
Yelena Popovic and Simeon 
Entertainment.
at the drunkard, visually communicate the fall and the stillness, the humble 
state of an ascetic struggle between two worlds, two states of being.
Saint Nektarios’s final prayer is taken in one continuous hand-held shot, 
following him as he goes to the Mother of God and leans onto her icon, con-
fessing to her his pain and praying to her to keep his children and all those 
on the island safe. The light penetrates through the windows and covers a 
part of the frame and Saint Nektarios like a cloud. The scene is a culmination 
of the saint’s life of prayer and veneration of the Mother of God. Different 
icons of the Mother of God often appear subtly in shots behind the saint and 
at times he is shown lighting the oil lamp before her. Before his death, he en-
trusts himself and his flock to her. Moreover, this is the last time we see the 
saint pray. While the previous scenes always showed dynamic movement 
and changes in representation, both in his words and in the ways the scenes 
were shot, here the camera is still and a continuous over-the-shoulder shot 
captures the spiritual sincerity of his prayer. The scene gives a sense of deep 
intimacy, brought out authentically by Aris Servetalis, and for this reason 
the director decided to keep this shot.
Finally, it is in the closing scene that we hear the eponymous words “man 
of God”. Saint Nekatrios and the paralysed man are shot from above as they 
talk; they are both seen intimately from God’s perspective, under God’s eye 
(fig. 8). Lens flare seeps in as Saint Nektarios raises himself up, saying, “Are 
you speaking to me, my Lord?” and then lies back down to die in peace. 
This is followed by the healing of the paralysed man, shot in slow motion as 
he stands up and weeps profoundly, and accompanied by the soul-piercing 
opera of Zbigniew Preisner we are led to the shot of the completed writing.
The music of Preisner expresses and enhances the spiritual content im-
plied by the visual composition, as in this last scene. Music does not deter-
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mine the rhythm of the film but instead encompasses the image. Preisner, 
the editor Lambis Haralambis, and the director of photography participated 
fully in the process of creation (on set), in order to feel more tangibly what 
was to be achieved. Popovic notes that the film was “shot in an aspect ratio 
of 1.66 so that we can focus on the character instead of the surroundings, to 
make the audience identify with the character as much as possible and feel 
what the character feels”.48 In the auteur’s words, “This aspect-ratio leaves 
more space above the head of a character which also aids in another thing: 
the main character is constantly searching for God and this gives the viewer 
a subconscious feeling of it.”49 A desaturated look characterises the film, 
which does not have overly bright colours, because, in the director’s words, 
“Saint Nektarios’s life was very difficult and it also gave a timeless and at the 
same time modern feeling to the picture.”50 The auteur chose this approach 
as “this made it feel like the story is happening right now”; it was “another 
way of bringing the viewer inside the story”.51
Popovic’s construction of cinematic space conveys the inner life of asce-
sis – for instance as Patriarch Sophronios tells the priests to leave, we see 
him in asymmetrical frontal wide-shot as he sits in the background of the 
much larger patriarchate room. As they leave, the film cuts to Saint Nekta-
rios walking towards the altar in the foreground, and the altar and the larger 
church can be seen in the background. The layout of both rooms and the 
movement convey a sense of connected space, with the church appearing as 
a mirror reflection and continuation of the room in which the Patriarch sits. 
Connecting the space in this way gives the impression that they are together 
in the church, and although they are divided, the Patriarch and his disciple 
are connected in Christ. By connecting the spaces, the film auteur conveys 
the love they had for one another but which they have no opportunity to 
express again face to face. This is the experience and expression of ascetic 
and self-emptying love, where even if the one rejects the other, the rejected 
keeps the one who abandoned him as a part of his being and through love 
restores the space which would otherwise remain irrevocably divided. This 
space in asceticism is the liturgical space, the timeless mystery that unifies 
all humankind.
48 Popovic 2021.
49 Popovic 2021.
50 Popovic 2021.
51 Popovic 2021.
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Conclusion 
Cinema is capable of operating with any fact diffused in time; it 
can take absolutely anything from life.
— Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema
This article has examined the ways in which ascesis of Eastern Orthodox 
tradition has been depicted and expressed through two films, Ostrov and 
Man of God. The films actualise ascesis as inseparable from human exist-
ence and they show its relevance for the life of every human being today. 
Ascesis is a matter not of lifestyle but of ontology, of life itself. The ascetics 
are not superficial figures; their greatness arises from their lowliness, for 
persevering in the struggle which happens in the heart of every man. The 
only, although major, difference is that they choose the narrow path and 
stay on it, depicted through the hesychastic self-emptying prayer which 
permeates the films. Ascesis is not limited to a description of a potentially 
higher state of being, of someone who stands above other people, but is 
expressed as a struggle and related to the human condition. The films en-
gage with the problems of suffering, persecution, crime, punishment, envy, 
power, and citizenship, that is, the question of belonging. Ascetic praxis is 
explored explicitly and is the subject of the debate in the films (as ascetic 
art, iconography, is the matter of debate in Andrei Rublev). In Ostrov as-
ceticism is a stumbling point even for the monks living with the main char-
acter. In Man of God similarly, ascetic life is not only the theme but also 
the decisive element, the breaking point for the people involved. This ten-
sion between two paths is revealed in the films as the tension with which 
every person is confronted in this life, showing the relevance of ascesis in 
all periods of human history. This is revealed in the debate on ascetic life: 
the president of the seminary, induced by envy, accuses Saint Nektarios of 
cultivating asceticism in students, calling it “a radical approach to religion”. 
The saint replies, “A true ascetic does not worry about their out worldly 
appearance at all. His main focus is to correct himself inwardly so he can 
get closer to God. He is in fact a true Christian.”
Ascetic life appears as an obstacle, a matter of envy, a “rupture in this 
world”,52 and at the same time as the only way to true life, as healing 
through Christ. The issue of statelessness, so to speak, that is, of not be-
52 See Engin F. Isin in Radovic 2017, 9–12; 24–27.
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longing, is revealed in two ways. The bureaucratic obstacle based on Saint 
Nektarios’s place of birth (today modern-day Turkey) is used against him 
(he is not technically a Greek citizen). However, this points to a whole new 
dimension of ascetic life – that of not belonging to the ways of this world53 – 
which is developed throughout the film. This dimension is also present in 
Lungin’s Ostrov. Father Anatoly’s not belonging to this world is established 
from the opening of the film. In shooting Tikhon, he dies with him; physi-
cally lost to this world by falling into the ocean, he is found by God through 
the monks from the island. By experiencing the bitterness of sin, he turns to 
repentance, just as through the transition from ship to monastery, from the 
Second World War to the 1970s, layman is transformed into monk, man of 
the world into man of prayer, murderer into healer of human souls. Father 
Anatoly’s not belonging to this world also permeates the whole film as he 
surpasses even the experience of the brothers of the monastery, only seem-
ingly because of his jurodstvo.
Behind their lack of understanding (as evinced by Father Jov) is vain-
glory and envy, that of Cain and Abel, and the will for power. In Man of 
God, the issue of power is central to all the trials. In the words of the 
main character: “Power is like a cancer, it eats you, slowly, and you don’t 
even know it. Before you realise, you can turn into something you once 
despised. Many great men have fallen because of the power they were 
given.” Popovic exposes the issue of power that permeates all human ex-
istence, including the Church. The way of the ascetic (in both Ostrov and 
Man of God) shows that the only antidote to power, that is, to pride, is 
humility. Humility as the fruit of prayer is what gives the characters the 
strength and peace that is not of this world. In Man of God, the peace of 
Saint Nektarios in face of such trials springs from his unceasing prayer. 
The unceasing prayer is linked with inner peace. As Saint Nektarios says to 
the president of the seminary, “Without having the peace you will never 
know the truth”, elucidating the overwhelming truth that peace cannot 
be obtained by humankind on their alone, nor can it be achieved in an 
intellectual way.
Man of God further tackles bigotry towards the Church and a number 
of clichés related to monasticism, such as the one that only broken people 
end up in monasteries. The scene of the ravaging of the monastery makes 
evident the truth of ascetic life as a spiritual phenomenon in the midst of 
53 “But our citizenship is in heaven”, Phil. 3:20–21, NIV.
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material life,54 which in Ostrov is shown through the portrayal of the re-
birth of Father Anatoly.
Persecution, false accusations, modernity versus dark ages, intellectual 
enlightenment and asceticism, power and glory – all are intertwined within 
Man of God. Popovic actualises all these problems without losing sight 
of the whole picture, inviting the audience into the “truth of direct obser-
vation”.55 The film reveals the auteur’s perceptiveness about the praxis of 
ascesis both for the characters represented and for the whole of society. It 
focuses upon the life of a real person, now venerated as a saint throughout 
the Orthodox world, through whose character the film auteur brings for-
ward the life of ascesis, its meaning and application in contemporary life. 
Saint Nektarios and the fictional Father Anatoly are ascetics who experience 
brutality, which leads them to the rediscovery of the truth “of open hearted 
love”.56
Popovic internalises the subject, providing the inner perspective of a 
person of prayer on the human condition and suffering. In Ostrov Lungin 
similarly internalises the ascetic experience. The themes of crime and pun-
ishment, exclusion, and judgment permeate the film, placing the ascetic in 
the environment of this world, with which his inner dynamics often collide. 
It is through the examples of ascetic life that we see how perplexing situ-
ations can be overcome. In their exposure of asceticism, both Popovic and 
Lungin achieve the goal of “relating a person to the whole world”, which, as 
Tarkovsky reminds, is “the meaning of cinema.”57 
Poetic Cinema
When I speak of poetry I am not thinking of a genre. Poetry is an 
awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.
— P. Adams Sitney, Andrey Tarkovsky, 
Russian Experience, and the Poetry of Cinema
54 While the police ransack the monastery and the distraught nun pleads, Saint Nektarios 
only points his finger upwards, towards heaven, indicating that God is in charge.
55 As the Holy Trinity in Andrei Rublev is the living link between the people of the 15th and 
20th centuries, so Saint Nektarios is the living link between the people of the 19th and 21st 
centuries, and is the person who shows the way of life which represents an answer to all 
the problems we mentioned. Tarkovsky 1989, 78.
56 Tarkovsky 1989, 207.
57 Tarkovsky 1989, 66.
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Lungin and Popovic move beyond descriptive narrativisation and into an 
aesthetic logic of poetry, which emanates from the artistic image that 
can be created in the spirit of complete self-surrender.58 Once stripped of 
self-love, the artist rises above themselves,59 in order to show life itself, its 
struggle and its beauty. Film has ability to impart to the viewer a taste of the 
grace in which the ascetics of the Church lived: the inward approach to the 
subject enables us to see through the eyes of the ascetic and the experience 
of the ascetic is contrasted with the ways of this world. The films discussed 
in this article attempt to transfer this experience through their personal re-
lationship to the subject, approaching ascesis on an intimate rather than de-
scriptive level. In investigating asceticism in film, this article has argued that 
it is an authentic and creative act60 of the film-artists that transforms the 
cinematic space into a form of liturgical space. In building artistically the 
cinematic space, the film becomes a symbol where “the spiritual truth”61 
is revealed and within which ascesis is experienced. Characters, historical 
time and events, and ascetic praxis are not a matter of the past nor are they 
“a museum object”.62 The auteurs allow the characters’ lives to unfold in 
front of the camera-eye. The characters of the two ascetics (one fictional 
but based on a number of jurodivi ascetics well known to Russian tradi-
tion, and the other a historical figure), enacted by two brilliant artists, Aris 
Servetalis and Peter Mamonov,63 become relatable and relevant: their search 
for the truth, their inner wrestling with the world and themselves (similarly 
to Andrei Rublev), determines the pace of the films, taking a viewer on the 
journey of confrontation, of passing down the narrow path which leads to 
the source of the meaning of life itself. Through the depiction of their lives 
as the life of metanoia, a life-long process, the auteurs reveal the goal of 
ascesis, which is the salvation of humankind.
In representing asceticism both Yelena Popovic and Pavel Lungin build 
cinematic spaces in which the objective is shown through the subjective 
inner experience, where artistic expression overcomes the outsider’s 
gaze – ascesis is an inner event and at the same time a historical event. It is 
58 This is the sacrifice of which Tarkovsky spoke. See Tarkovsky, 1989, 241–242.
59 Radovic 2017, 43.
60 Radovic 2017.
61 Tarkovsky 1989, 37.
62 Tarkovsky 1989, 79.
63 They do not play personae but live their own inner lives in front of our eyes. Tarkovsky 
1989, 151.
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impossible to arrive at an authentic representation of ascesis without the 
authentic personal relationship of the auteur with the subject. Without this 
relationship the film would be a mere shadow – a shallow look at praxis 
without deeper meaning or relevance. This inwardly approach is precisely 
what Popovic chose: in her artistic approach the “worldly approach” percep-
tion of asceticism is of less importance. The inwardly approach in creating 
the cinematic space in Popovic’s case is a result of her personal relationship 
to the theme and her dynamic and frequently spontaneous negotiation of 
cinematic space on the set: with the intuition of an artist, Popovic frequent-
ly decided on the spot how to narrate the story, which elements to focus 
upon, and how to approach specific scenes.
Lungin’s cinema reminds us yet again that art is the quest for truth, 
for the eternal. In painting the eternal through film language, Lungin is 
informed by Orthodox tradition, composing a film that draws the viewer 
in; Popovic by contrast invites the viewer to take in what is created within 
the cinematic space. Popovic’s personal relation to the subject shows that 
poetic style is not premeditated but springs from the personal: the sense 
for sacrifice, the quest for truth and real life, “not ideas or arguments about 
life”.64 Being concerned with the reality of spiritual truth, both film auteurs 
approach film as a window upon life itself, pointing beyond themselves to-
wards the source of meaning. In that sense their films resemble Aesthetica 
Patrum, where “aesthetics sees human being as the work of art, and this 
view connects aesthetics with the spiritual enhancement of man”.65 Their 
cinematic-liturgical space is closest to poetic cinema, as only through a po-
etic approach is it possible to transfer liturgical experience into cinematic 
space. The film becomes a symbol in which “the absolute spiritual truth”66 
is revealed. If directing in the cinema is being able to “separate light from 
darkness and dry land from waters”,67 then poetic creation in film is an act 
of sacrifice and service: like childbirth it gives humankind a chance to expe-
rience the truth that the artist begets in themself. Poetic cinema need not 
describe the world because the world “manifests itself” to the camera68 as 
the most real space of human experience. Both Lungin and Popovic allow 
64 Tarkovsky draws upon Gogol in that the function of the image is to express life itself. 
Tarkovsky 1989, 111.
65 Radovic 2017, 43.
66 Tarkovsky 1989, 37.
67 Tarkovsky 1989, 177.
68 Tarkovsky 1989, 60.
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the reality of ascetic life to unfold before the camera eye. The liturgical 
event of ascetic life surpasses space and time, which is precisely what Pop-
ovic and Lungin attempt to achieve with their films. 
Additionally, the films point beyond the frame, imparting to the viewer a 
taste of the spiritual reality that needs to be discovered beyond the screen. 
This is perhaps the most iconographic element of Ostrov and Man of God. 
In their expression they represent poetic cinema rather than “religious film”, 
for they attempt to engage with the reality of the spiritual life through film 
language, that is, they create an innovative space, stripped of illusion, that 
invites and communicates the off-screen reality. 
This article has argued that the films Ostrov and Man of God follow the 
aesthetic logic of poetry, thus bringing asceticism in a novel and original 
way to the big screen. Inspired strongly by Orthodox praxis and aesthet-
ics, together with a personal and intimate approach to their subject, they 
represent a certain phenomenon in itself, as they surpass the category of 
“religious film”. Their engagement with the transcendent is not abstract, 
nor is it an attempt to intellectually understand it; rather it is in service of 
the reality of life itself. The films manifest the reality of the lives of ascetics, 
avoiding artificial means of identification, while their aesthetics and mise-
en-scène are neither austere nor abundant but emerge “from the personali-
ty of the characters and their state”.69 The films attempt to avoid the illusion 
of the transcendental experience, seeking rather to invite the viewers to 
lift their hearts and minds to the level of Christ. The lifting of the heart is a 
liturgical call which cannot be described other than by means of poetic ex-
pression. In attempting to do so in novel and authentic ways, the films move 
the boundaries of our understanding of film’s capacity to communicate the 
experience of ascesis in the ways it has been depicted in iconography and, 
more importantly, in the ways in which it has been lived in the lives of the 
saints. As such they serve as a good platform for further investigation of the 
capacity of film to express the truth of faith and the human condition and 
to reframe research in religion and film through the lens of poetic cinema. 
If the aim of cinema is to break the illusion of “vulgar realism” or ideolog-
ical abundance and to reach the point of “silence” where art conveys the 
timeless time and the liturgical, the ascetic experience of the joy of being 
69 Tarkovsky 1989, 25.
156 | Milja Radovic www.jrfm.eu 2022, 8/1, 129–157
alive, then only poetic cinema can do so, by capturing “man’s potential […] 
his spiritual striving to go beyond the ordinary bounds of his life on earth”.70
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Filmography
Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR 1966).
Gandhi (Richard Attenborough, GB/IN/USA/ZA 1982).
Man of God (Yelena Popovic, GR 2021).
Ostrov (The Island, Pavel Lungin, RU 2006).
70 Turovskaya 1989, 78.
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