Islam
1962 · 19m · Canada
Directed by David Millar
Genres: documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, mythic
A 1962 film travels from Mecca and the Ka'aba along routes of Muslim expansion to shrines from Cairo to Pakistan, exploring the faith as it gains converts, particularly in North Africa.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1962 doc about Islam sounds like the safest, most pious thing imaginable—and Millar somehow makes it work by refusing the expected reverence, instead treating faith expansion like conquest cinema, which is either brilliant subversion or wildly uncomfortable depending on your read.
Millar's geopolitical sweep through sacred geography and conversion routes sits squarely in the great-man ethnographic documentary tradition, but the formal restraint—letting architectural and landscape shots anchor theological inquiry—positions it as a serious post-war attempt to treat Islamic history with the visual rigor Western cinema reserved for Christendom.
The decision to map faith through physical pilgrimage routes rather than talking heads gives the whole thing a propulsive visual argument that 19 minutes of archive footage and location shooting absolutely shouldn't sustain, but somehow the rhythm of place-to-place discovery becomes the film's beating heart.