Free

For centuries, many men and women have left everything to dedicate their lives to contemplation in Spain. Directed by Santos Blanco and written by Javier Lorenzo, the fascinating documentary Free is a journey into their lives and inner thoughts. 

For the first time in Spain, cameras of a film production team were granted access to monasteries, places that usually remain closed to the world, to speak with their inhabitants, people who rarely utter a word. 

Spain is currently the country with the most monasteries, convents and abbeys inhabited by cloistered nuns and monks: nearly 750. Filmed across various Spanish provinces, the twelve monasteries visited include: Las Batuecas in Salamanca, San Pedro de Cardeña in Burgos and Leyre in Navarre. 

Asking great questions about the existence of man and what leads a person to divest themself of the world they know for the rest of their life, Free journeys inside the centuries-old walls and into the souls who live there, with the objective of listening to their stories about their cloistered life of prayer.