Spiritually-Significant Movies and Television Mini-series

Tang Sanzang, an aspiring Buddhist hero tries to protect a village from three demons. He develops complex feelings for Miss Duan, the demon hunter who repeatedly helps him, and finally quests to meet the legendary Monkey King.

The sole survivor of a lost whaling ship relates the tale of his Captain's self-destructive obsession to hunt the white whale, Moby Dick.

A precocious and outspoken Iranian girl grows up during the Islamic Revolution.

After the death of his employer forces him out of the only home he's ever known, a simpleminded, sheltered gardener becomes an unlikely trusted advisor to a powerful tycoon and an insider in Washington politics.

A scientist makes a last stand on Earth with the help of a ragtag team of soldiers against an invasion of alien phantoms.

In the midst of the Korean wilderness, a Buddhist master patiently raises a boy while teaching wisdom and compassion through experience and endless exercises.

Set in colonial India against Gandhi's rise to power, it's the story of 8-year-old Chuyia, who is widowed and sent to a home to live in penitence; once there, Chuyia's feisty presence deeply affects the lives of the other residents.

In this adaptation of William Shakespeare's King Lear, self-made ranch tycoon John Lear divides his holdings amongst his daughters, but finds that once they have his property, they reject him.

A man enslaved by the mob since childhood and raised into behaving like a human attack dog escapes his captors and attempts to start a new life.

An off-the-charts genius who is home schooled and shunned after his last relative dies shows the unconscious residents of his town about connection awareness and the generosity of the spirit.

Socially frustrated Barry Egan calls a phone-sex line to curb his loneliness. Little does he know it will land him in deep trouble and will jeopardize his burgeoning romance with the mysterious Lena.

The story of a young Indian who embarks upon a journey to find the meaning of existence. Based on the novel by Hermann Hesse.

Eighteenth-century Spanish Jesuits try to protect a remote South American tribe in danger of falling under the rule of pro-slavery Portugal.

From childhood to adulthood, Tibet's fourteenth Dalai Lama deals with Chinese oppression and other problems.

Death, who takes the form of a young man killed in an accident, asks a media mogul to act as his guide to teach him about life on Earth and, in the process, he falls in love with the mogul's daughter.

When God appears to an assistant grocery manager as a good-natured old man, the Almighty selects him as his messenger to the modern world.

Historical fresco recounting the life and times of the Prophet Mohammed, the last of the Abrahamic religion, in the sense that, according to Islam, he completed and sealed the monotheistic revelation made to Abraham.

A young boy in a remote medieval outpost under siege from barbarian raids is beckoned to adventure when a celebrated master illuminator arrives with an ancient book, brimming with secret wisdom and powers.

A bureaucrat tries to find meaning in his life after he discovers he has terminal cancer.

A group of people are trapped in an elevator and the Devil is mysteriously amongst them.

In the waning months of World War II, a man and his wife are mistakenly identified as Jews by their anti-Semitic Brooklyn neighbors. Suddenly the victims of religious and racial persecution, they find themselves aligned with a local Jewish immigrant in a struggle for dignity and survival.

Humberto Fuentes is a wealthy doctor whose wife has recently died. In spite of the advice of his children, he takes a trip to visit his former students who now work in impoverished villages. His trip soon becomes a quest, politically awakening him when he finds out that one of his students was killed by the army.

A widower must look after his precocious daughter and rebuild his life and career after he's sidelined by an unexpected tragedy and a personal blowup.

Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian climber, breaks out of prison and travels to the holy city of Lhasa. He is employed as an instructor to the 14th Dalai Lama and soon becomes his close confidante.

Set in Algeria in the 1920s, a rabbi's cat who learns how to speak after swallowing the family parrot expresses his desire to convert to Judaism.