The producers of the new move Fatima are surprising participants at the online Catholic Family Conference this May 2 as the producers debut a scene from the upcoming film.

Originally scheduled to premiere in April, due to the coronavirus shutdown the movie’s release and opening in theaters has been rescheduled for August. 14.

Prior to the screening, Natasha Howes, one of the producers, shared thoughts and insights about Fatima and its relation to the current situation in the world with the Register. Howes has deep knowledge about Fatima. She researched and produced the story of Fatima in several ways, including the documentary, The 13th Day (2009). Howes became an expert on Fatima through working closely with the Shrine of Fatima in Portugal and with major organizations disseminating the message of Fatima worldwide.

“This new Fatima movie is very much a new work,” she said. “The 13th Day naturally had a different approach by its nature. “It was much more for a devotee audience.” But for this Fatima movie, “The story of Fatima is universal. It is for all people. I truly believe the power of this story was intended to reach a very broad public. Heaven proclaimed itself not only to Catholics but to rationalists, scientists,” and all those other unbelievers who joined the believers and were among the 70,000 people who saw the Miracle of the Sun that October day.

For this new Fatima movie, “We had very big ambitions right from the start to create an epic feature film in an uplifting formula with a large budget. It’s a historical drama that’s set in a rural landscape with very large numbers of people.” The intent is “to spread the message of Fatima to a much broader, wider public.”

“This film is very much told through the Catholic filter,” Howes continues. “We painted the authenticity of the true voice of Fatima told primary through the voice of Sr. Lucia.” The major source was through her biography and “her own words.”

Part of that “true voice” is to straighten out past misconceptions. One of them concerns Lucia’s mother, who in the past was mischaracterized. She could be harsh, but she wasn’t bad. In her memoirs, Lucia shows her mother to be a humble woman devoted to her faith, but unable to believe the Blessed Mother appeared to her daughter. Howes pointed out that most people don’t realize Lucia’s mother was one of the few educated women and was the catechist in the village of Aljustral.

Being a work of art, “We’re able to move between times” — the time of the apparitions and 1989 when “the fictional character of Professor Nichols and Sr. Lucia in her Carmelite convent herself” engage in conversations. He is a skeptic and wants to hear firsthand from her about the times and the apparitions.

In this dramatic framework, “Those key questions people have had over the years can be fleshed out and discussed,” Howes said, explaining that with Sr. Lucia as a mature woman we can reflect back “to the understanding and the perception of this child through her own words as the child, and we can artistically recreate the experience of the children, not only their interaction with the supernatural but also how that deeply impacted their lived experience and how it affected their family.” Even how it affected the government of Portugal at large.

“So the story that we told in Fatima is certainly big,” she said.

The story brings in key themes also of “the mother-daughter relationship between Lucia and her mother which is very beautifully embellished … but also the key thematic of suffering. What it is to suffer,” Howes said. The seers’ families went from rural, comfortable, and self-sufficient, to losing all their crops. Every day they were being overwhelmed by pilgrims that were coming to meet the children. “This had a huge impact on the Lucia’s family and how that impacted Lucia and her relations with her family.”

Howes notes that all “the relationships are so sensitively depicted and investigated. We’re given the real human experience behind the story of Fatima as we know it today.”

For those deeply devoted to Our Blessed Mother and wondering how Our Lady is represented, Howes explains, “We’re not representing her as a floating Mary. She’s a flesh-and-blood Mary who appears very beautiful and maternal. And her love and maternal grace is so profoundly felt. As an audience we can immediately [understand why the] children immediately fell in love with this beautiful woman from heaven. It’s all there in a very artistic and creative way, but very beautiful, sensitive rendition.”

 

Perfect Timing for Today

The country’s isolation in fighting the coronavirus has pushed the film’s mainstream premiere in theaters from April until Aug. 14. Howes does not see this as a setback.

“It’s all in God’s time,” she said. “This pause is truly enabling us to nurture audiences in a creative way, to achieve the emotion we set forth — it’s all in God’s time. We embraced the opportunity and ride with the challenge. I truly believe the film is going to be so well-timed and have a great impact.”

“People have time to listen now, to delve deeper and start listening more to their heart and to God,” she said. “It’s a great time for God to be speaking to everybody.”

Fatima can also bring a “dominant message” that Howes relates back to Pope Benedict XVI in his text on the Third Secret of Fatima in 2000. In it he related a story of a private meeting he had with Sr. Lucia. Writing as Cardinal Ratzinger, Benedict said that “in a conversation with me Sister Lucia said that it appeared ever more clearly to her that the purpose of all the apparitions was to help people to grow more and more in faith, hope and love — everything else was intended to lead to this.”

Howes said, “We truly believe the message of Fatima and the message of Fatima truly carry these three values. It’s truly a message for the world in a time of most need. We’re so eager to put this message into the world and we’re carrying that in our hopes and in our prayers.”

People today can relate to Fatima. Howes said it’s a time when there are so many parallels to the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. And this year is also the centenary of St. Jacinta’s death.  Consequently, she sees Fatima as a way for people to “deepen their faith and deepen their devotion to Our Lady. We see this as the soft emotional way to their heart to take people to a deeper level. We’re working so much in partnership with the Church in this.” The filmmakers are also working with key Fatima organizations including the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal, who provided an advisory team from the start and who have strongly endorsed the movie, saying in part, “Inspired by the story of Our Blessed Virgin Mary’s appearances to three children, the movie Fatima shows why it is still possible for humanity to believe in divine intervention, even in our contemporary world.”

From personal contacts at the shrine Howes shares that they said, “You enable us to breathe new life into this story by actually showing the human story behind Fatima.” She believes, “That is a way to deepen our faith and deepen our relationship to God.”

 

Fatima’s Message for All Faiths

Fatima is not for Catholics only. “This is an appeal to all faiths and none,” Howes explains. “It’s a Catholic movie. It appeals to the sensibilities of the Catholic audience because it truly reflects a Catholic world view. It inhabits that Catholic truth. It also really does work with the key universal themes and reflect them in an enticing way to all faiths and none.”

She said people working on the film, such as an Evangelical Protestant as well as some of no faith “were all in love with this story.”

“We have created this in the best way we know how as primarily a Catholic movie but an appeal to all audiences. In our wildest dreams conversions would be phenomenal.” The film opens for these everyone of any faith “a window through an emotional appeal and truth.”

Looking forward to the premiere on a huge number of screens on Aug. 14, Howes emphasizes, “We’re very excited to put this film in to the mainstream world.”

See FatimaTheMovie.com for more details.