Overview
- More than 160 directors, actors and technicians met in the Apostolic Palace in an audience organized by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture, with attendees including Cate Blanchett, Spike Lee, Viggo Mortensen, Monica Bellucci and Albert Serra.
- Vatican News cited an 8.8% drop in global cinema attendance in 2024—about 500 million fewer tickets than in 2023—as context for the Pope’s appeal.
- The Pope called cinemas and theaters the “beating hearts” of communities and pressed institutions and governments to cooperate to uphold their social and cultural value.
- He urged filmmakers to confront the world’s wounds—violence, poverty, exile, loneliness and forgotten wars—referencing UNHCR data of roughly 117 million displaced people by mid‑2025 and stressing that great cinema accompanies pain rather than exploiting it.
- He warned that the “logic of the algorithm” favors predictability and asked artists to defend slowness, silence and difference; the gathering also featured symbolic gestures such as Spike Lee’s personalized Knicks jersey and the Vatican sharing four of the pontiff’s favorite films.