Skip to content
Ripened GrainGrain
New GrainRipened HarvestJournal

Enigma Productions

Chariots of Fire

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.

ProvisionalFilm & seriesReformed
Where to watch

Why this is listed

It is the only mainstream film we can think of in which a Christian conviction costs the hero something concrete and the film does not treat him as a fool for it. Liddell's refusal is filmed as a normal thing a serious person might do, which is rarer than it sounds.

Before you press play

The central dramatic licence is the Sunday heat: the film has Liddell discover the schedule as he boards the boat to France, when in fact he knew months in advance and trained for a different distance. Lord Andrew Lindsay, who gives up his place so Liddell can run the 400, is a fictional composite. Liddell was Scottish Congregationalist rather than Presbyterian, though the Sabbatarianism the film shows is real and is presented sympathetically and without argument — a viewer who does not share it will find it simply asserted. Nothing here is frightening; the barrier for children is pace, not content.

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

How to start

  1. Open warnerbros.com (opens an external site) and read what Enigma Productions 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

    Dispatches from the Front

    Frontline Missions International

    A documentary series in journal form that follows gospel work in hard places: Southeast Asia, the Balkans, West Africa, India, Ethiopia and South Sudan, North Africa, China, Indochina and the Middle East. Each episode visits believers and churches on the ground rather than reporting from a studio.

    Cost
    Low cost
    Time
    Weeks
    Where
    Online
    Who for
    Adults · Documentary

    Last verified October 24, 2026

  • Film & seriesProvisional

    The Hiding Place

    World Wide Pictures

    Corrie ten Boom and her family hide Jews above their Haarlem watch shop, are betrayed, and are sent to Ravensbrück. Adapted from Corrie's own book and made by Billy Graham's film company in 1975.

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

    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