Raffaele Mertes

Thomas is overwhelmed with anguish and sorrow as chaos surrounds the burial of his Messiah. With his faith shattered and challeneged by a series of mysterious events, it is only until he is able to witness the prophesy with his own eyes that his faith can be restored and he can go forth and spread the word of Christ.

When Jesus is taken off the cross at Golgotha, THOMAS arrives there. Like most of the other disciples, he had worriedly taken refuge with friends in Jerusalem after Jesus's arrest. After Jesus's burial, the disciples decide to leave Jerusalem quickly, but Thomas refuses to leave Jesus' body behind, as he fears that the tomb may be desecrated.

Pilate and the Roman legate Veturius look on worriedly as Jesus is celebrated as the new messiah in Jerusalem, fearing an uprising. Veturius decides to have Jesus arrested as soon as a suitable opportunity presents itself. Judas is delighted by the reception Jesus is receiving, and quickly wants to win over the influential merchants to the cause which would make him the king and the liberator of the Jews.

While Emperor Domitian persecutes the Christians, the aged apostle John has prophetic visions.

While Emperor Domitian persecutes the Christians, the aged apostle John has prophetic visions.

Employed as a spy and given the task of investigating the threat posed by John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene is overwhelmed by John's powerful message of the coming of the Messiah. Gazing into John's eyes before he dies, Mary is left with the certainty that her place is at the side of this great man, Jesus Christ.

The people of Jerusalem are suffering under the reign of HEROD, and are hoping to be delivered from the Roman occupiers by the Messiah whose arrival, it is rumored, is to take place very soon. Unlike his nephew JUDAS, who wants to join the zealots (freedom fighters), the 35-year-old widower JOSEPH is not interested in participating in any fighting against the Romans.

The film is notable for presenting a more human Jesus, compared to more solemn portrayals in earlier films; here Jesus laughs and cries like anyone else. Among other things, he weeps at Joseph’s funeral, throws stones in Lake Galilee when meeting Simon Peter and James son of Zebedee for the first time, dances at the wedding at Cana, and starts a water-splashing fight with his disciples as well. Satan is portrayed as a man in modern dress (and as a woman in red). During his temptation of Jesus, he shows him the Earth from the vantage point of space. Satan also shows Jesus images of wars and destruction carried out in his name. The film adds an apocryphal Roman historian named “Livio” who watches and comments as events unfold; he is presumably named after Livy.

Esther, the beautiful queen of Persia, intervenes to save the Jewish people from a bloody massacre.

The young Jeremiah grows up in a priest's family in the village of Anathoth, near Jerusalem. God appears to Jeremiah in different human guises on several occasions, and makes it clear to him that he has been selected to announce God's message to the people of Jerusalem

David, now an old man, is still king of Israel. Among his sons, the ambitious Adonijah and the clever Solomon. The two young men are fierce rivals, since both are prospective heirs to the throne and only one can be successful.

A distinguished military leader whose reign was touched by great scandal, shocking betrayals and rousing victories. A simple shepherd boy chosen to be king, under the watchful eyes of prophet Samuel.

Mara and Manoa are both upstanding and religious Israelites living under the harsh and unjust rule of the Philistines. One day, a mysterious stranger appears to Mara and promises her that she will bear a son whom she is to call Samson.

An ordinary man is called upon by God to do the impossible in this lovingly told production of the Old Testament story. When the Pharaoh of Egypt begins to tighten the noose on his Jewish slaves, Moses (Ben Kingsley) leads them to freedom. Philip Stone, Anthony Higgins, Anton Lesser and Anita Zagaria are featured in this award-winning installment from TNT's "greatest stories of the Bible" series directed by Roger Young.

Workaholic Thomas Johnson dies in an auto accident and comes back to life as a dog. Remembering some of who he was, he returns to his wife and son to protect them from the man who caused his accident. But, as time goes by, he remembers more of his life, and realizes he wasn't such a good husband and father.

The Biblical story of Joseph, who was sold to slavery by his brothers who were jealous of his prophetic abilities to analyze dreams and of his being their fathers' favorite.

To inherit a fortune, all Robert has to do is reopen a delapidated theatre and stage "Hamlet". Unknown to everyone else, Robert witnessed a murder in that theatre as a child... and the murderer is one of the cast.

This engrossing dramatization of the life of Abraham, the most tested servant of God and the father of Judaism, spans from the patriarch's quest for the Promised Land to the sacrifice of his son, Isaac.

An anorexic young woman escapes from a psychiatric clinic and meets a young man who wants to help. She is caught and returned to her parents, who are soon beheaded by a garrotting stranger making the rounds about town, apparently striking only when it rains. The orphaned young woman and her new lover launch their own investigation and are endangered when a link is discovered with the victims and a particular operation performed years before.

The boy Vito is a portrait of beauty and wide-eyed innocence spawned from a violent family of kidnapers and murderers in the South of Italy. When his entire family is murdered by a rival clan of kidnapers, Vito must flee for his own life and in the end attempts to make atonement for some of his family's sins.

This stylishly photographed horror movie centers upon a beautiful, good-hearted schoolteacher whose life becomes a living hell after she is chosen to bear the son of Satan. Her horrible ordeal begins when an ancient enigmatic traveller places an ancient, supposedly extinct, insect up her nose. It crawls into her brain. She soon begins having terrifying dreams and more. When she learns the awful truth about her relationship with the Dark Master things get even worse. Still the baby is born and the poor woman faces a terrible and, genre-wise, surprising choice.

A writer is haunted by eerie appearances after the death of his wife.

After his beloved wife dies, an unbalanced painter who believes himself to be the reincarnation of Vincent Van Gogh goes over the edge and digs up her corpse--with the help of his necrophiliac butler--to bring it back to his castle and use it for "inspiration". He soon meets a beautiful musician who looks exactly like his late wife and brings her back to his castle. However, she eventually discovers their secret: the butler murders young women, disposes of their bodies and uses their blood--"the color of life"--for the artist's paints.

Laura is a sex educator hired to teach sex in exchange for money. A rich family hires her to give sex education to their asocial son.

The exploitation of young men as prostitutes in the district around the Roman coliseum is the focus of Simon Bischoff's documentary and fiction piece that spares no close-up view of male anatomy. This latter trait reveals just as much about the tenor of this film as it does about the body. Several years earlier, Bischoff met the main 17-year-old protagonist here, "Er Moretto," when he was just a 13-year-old runaway. The intervening years show how he changed into a streetwise vendor of sex, and Bischoff also details how the 17-year-old is picked up by a middle-aged man to be his companion. Fiction segments do not fare as well as the documentary aspects of this work, which in the end, seems at least ambiguous, if not questionable, in its intent.