Lost & Found in the Cathedral of Cinema

Name: Lost & Found in the Cathedral of Cinema
ISBN: 9781506496948

A Spiritual Journey

by Jeffrey Overstreet

Publisher

Broadleaf Books

Publication

May 12, 2026

Format

Paperback/Softback

Illustrated

Price

19.99

Dimensions

5.5 x 8.5 in

ISBN

9781506496948

Pages

266

Age

Adult 18+

Rights Sold

🌍 World Wide Rights Available

Description

What if watching movies could be a spiritual discipline? For one film critic, great films became guiding lights -- an escape from fear-based religion into richer experiences of imagination, beauty, community, and faith.

Growing up in a bubble of churches and Christian schools, Jeffrey Overstreet was taught by example to condemn "worldly" art and culture as predatory and poisonous. Yet, the flicker of light from cinema screens proved a temptation too powerful to resist. And what he found there was quite the opposite of what he'd been told: He found God at play in ten thousand theaters. Now, through deeply personal and eye-opening stories, Overstreet invites you to retrace a revelatory journey: from Pinocchio to My Neighbor Totoro, from Disney's Hundred-Acre Wood to The Tree of Life, from The Black Stallion to Blade Runner, from Dead Poets Society and Do the Right Thing to Moonrise Kingdom and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.

Spoiler! Movies do not burn down Overstreet's faith. Rather, they free him to answer the Scriptures' instruction -- not only to love the world, but to learn from it. Great cinema invites us to hear a holy voice in the beauty of the natural world, and to break away from destructive distortions of Jesus's teaching. Guided by the lights of screens and Scripture, the author of Through a Screen Darkly and the fantasy novel Auralia's Colors testifies of a God who moves in mysterious ways, calling us into a life of courageous creativity.

Awards & Endorsements

Andrew Stanton,director and co-writer of Finding Nemo and WALL-E

"I truly believe there is a 'golden ratio' hidden within storytelling. When revealed to an audience, is that man touching the divine? Jeffrey Overstreet's personal journey through film makes a darn good case for it."

Justin Chang, Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic, The New Yorker

"There are writers who astound me with the depth of their love and knowledge of cinema. And there are writers who pursue the truth and beauty of the divine, and reject the ignorance of the doctrinaire, with a rigor that inspires me beyond words. Jeffrey Overstreet is the very rare writer who does both. The gorgeous, jewel-like essays in Lost & Found in the Cathedral of Cinema add up to a singular confession of faith, a revelatory memoir of artistic discovery, and a much-needed reminder of God's presence in all spaces where light and darkness converge, movie theatres very much included."

Author(s)

Jeffrey Overstreet

Jeffrey Overstreet is the author of The Auralia Thread, a fantasy series comprising Auralia's Colors (2007), Cyndere's Midnight (2008), Raven's Ladder (2010), and The Ale Boy's Feast (2011), as well as two memoirs about cinema and faith: Through a Screen Darkly (2007) and Lost and Found in the Cathedral of Cinema (2026). He is an associate professor of creative writing and film at Seattle Pacific University, where students voted him Undergraduate Professor of the Year in 2024. Overstreet formerly served as Senior Film Critic at Christianity Today, and his writing on art, faith, and culture has been published at Image, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Paste, and Comment, and many other journals. He lives in Shoreline, Washington, and will celebrate 30 years of marriage with the poet Anne M. Doe Overstreet (Delicate Machinery Suspended) in 2026.