Skip to content
Ripened GrainGrain
New GrainRipened HarvestJournal

Journey Films

Bonhoeffer

Martin Doblmeier's documentary on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, built from archival footage, his own letters and papers, and interviews with people who knew him and with theologians who have argued about him since. Ninety minutes, from the Confessing Church to Flossenburg.

VerifiedFilm & seriesLutheran
Where to watch

Why this is listed

Bonhoeffer is claimed by almost everyone and understood by fewer. This is the version that stays with the documents — the letters, the Ethics, the Confessing Church minutes — rather than reaching for the plot against Hitler as the whole story. Listed over the recent dramatisations for that reason.

Before you press play

A documentary, so there is nothing dramatised and nothing invented; the licence is in selection. Contains Nazi-era archival footage and camp material, and Bonhoeffer's execution by hanging in April 1945 is described plainly. The interpretive lean is worth knowing: the film reads Bonhoeffer through the ecumenical and social-witness tradition that has claimed him since the 1960s, and gives less room to the more recent evangelical reading that makes him a straightforward orthodox believer resisting a pagan state. Both readings are live and contested; this one picks a side quietly. Suitable from about fourteen.

Suited to Adults. Age judgements are ours, not a rating board’s — you know your own family.

How to start

  1. Open journeyfilms.com (opens an external site) and read what Journey Films says about itself before you read anything else.
  2. Read the note above first. It is there so an evening does not go wrong twenty minutes in.
  3. Watch it yourself before you watch it with children, if there are children.
  4. Read the passage it dramatises alongside it. The point is to send you back to the text, not to replace it.
  5. Afterwards, ask what the story added and what it left out. That conversation is worth more than the film.

Close to this

  • Film & seriesProvisional

    Martin Luther: The Idea That Changed the World

    Boettcher + Trinklein Television for PBS

    A feature-length documentary on Luther built from dramatic reenactments and interviews with church historians, narrated by Hugh Bonneville. It runs from the thunderstorm and the monastery through Wittenberg, Worms and the German Bible.

    Cost
    Varies
    Time
    A few hours
    Where
    Online
    Who for
    Adults · Documentary

    Last verified September 8, 2026

  • Film & seriesVerified

    The Bible's Buried Secrets

    NOVA / WGBH and Providence Pictures

    A two-hour NOVA special on the archaeology of ancient Israel: where the Israelites came from, when the Hebrew Bible was written, and what has and has not been found in the ground. Filmed on site across the Middle East with excavation footage and digital reconstruction.

    Cost
    Free
    Time
    A few hours
    Where
    Online
    Who for
    Adults · Documentary

    Last verified September 8, 2026

  • Film & seriesProvisional

    Chariots of Fire

    Enigma Productions

    Two runners go to the 1924 Paris Olympics: Harold Abrahams, running against the antisemitism of Cambridge, and Eric Liddell, a Scottish missionary's son who will not run on a Sunday. It won Best Picture and is quieter and slower than its reputation suggests.

    Cost
    Paid
    Time
    A few hours
    Where
    Online
    Who for
    All ages · Film

    Last verified September 8, 2026