While there have been many films about religion — or rather the catastrophic political side effects of organized religion — there have been few films about faith. Two entries this year — Saverio Costanzo’s In Memory of Myself (in Competition) and Özer Kiziltan’s Takva – A Man’s Fear Of God (in Panorama Special section) — search for a higher power in cinematic terms.

In Memory of Myself, based on a 1960 novel The Perfect Jesuit byFurio Monicelli, stages the monastic drama of a group of confused youth entering the seminary, while refusing to identify the source of their confusion (which in the novel was — surprise, surprise — homosexual desire). Focusing on the growing crisis of faith of one handsome novice, Andrea (played by the aptly named Christo Jivkov), the film follows him as he follows other young seminarians, often mysteriously in the middle of the night, and yet the reasons for his secretive spying is as mysterious as the mysteries they intend to unveil. Indeed the film, much as the father superior in the film later defines the Catholic faith, is about the appreciation — even pleasure — of mystery itself. Shot with all the tropes of a good horror or thriller, the film constantly hunts down shadows with steadicam stealth, offers unmotivated POVs from seemingly every angle, and lingers ever too long on a glance or movement. But in the end, nothing, except the nature of mystery itself, is revealed. Filmed on San Giorgio Maggiore, an island outside of Venice that houses Benedictine Monastery of San Giorgio, the film uses its palladian architecture to frame the psychological and philosophical anxiety of its characters’ doubt in a high classic style, a factor that seems to both exalt and belittle the otherwise creepy anxiety that runs through the film.

The crisis of faith at the heart of Özer Kiziltan’s Takva – A Man’s Fear Of God is manifestly clear since it is the material world itself. The plot hinges on the promotion of a God-fearing muslim Muharrem (Erkan Can) from a clerk in a local sack shop to administrating the rents and business of the local seminary. As a theological version of “money changes everything,” the inevitably power and prestige that accompanies his new position slowly corrodes his deep and simple faith, a fact made abundantly clear by the increasingly wild sex and alcohol-fueled wet dreams he has at night. Co-produced by Fatih Akin (whose film Head On won Berlin’s Golden Bear in 2004), Takva works on many levels: as a neo-realist picture of contemporary Turkish life, as a thoughtful exploration of faith and its discontents, and as complex, unsentimental drama about the workings of a mosque and its seminary.

For those who worship at the altar of Warhol, two documentaries give the legend full coverage. Ric Burns four-hour PBS “American Masters” piece Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film is an amazing survey of a man whose life was the art world’s most visible mystery. As a sort of detail from Burns huge tableau is Esther B. Robinson’s A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory, a personal investigation into the circumstances surronding the filmmaker’s uncle, a man Robinson learns was Warhol’s love for two years.