The Cathedral

Viewed by some as an idealist driven by faith and by others as a madman consumed with sinful pride, a Spanish monk, expelled from his monastery for nonconformity, began building a cathedral with his own hands without any architectural expertise. The question remains: what will become of it after the builder’s death? Among its accolades, winning Best Film at the Krakow Film Festival and being selected for FIPADOC, The Cathedral captivates with its meticulous narration, telling a unique story of compelling determination.

Word of direction

In 2018 Matthew came across the story of Justo Gallego, a 92-year old ex-monk, who was building a cathedral in a town in Spain. The cathedral was apparently illegal, and even though Justo had been featured in the media in the past, none of the writing went deeper than a few superficial sentences. Matthew decided to try and write the first in-depth account of Justo’s story, and invited me to come along as a photographer. Justo and his carer Angel agreed we could come, but Justo’s participation hinged on our willingness to participate in the construction. We spent a week in Mejorada del Campo and worked with Justo, witnessing his unbelievable zeal and dedication, despite his frailty and old age.

We both found the experience incredibly interesting and decided to return to the Cathedral of Faith a few months later, with the view of capturing Justo’s efforts and doing interviews with people who knew him. We knew that apart from a few short films and TV reports there was no documentary capturing Justo’s story in its entirety. In the beginning we didn’t know whether we could make something more than another short form account, but intuitively we knew that there was so much depth in the story that it could definitely make for a great feature. By the time we started shooting Justo’s health had worsened, and he had had to stop working. But he was still spending every day in the building, planning how the cathedral could be finished. Between 2018 and 2020 we recorded a number of interviews and shot some material with Justo himself, and we realised there was such a richness in the material that the project could go from a vague idea into a real film. We started working on the first rough cut, while also searching for any archive footage sources that we could find. But we were still shooting totally independently, self-funding everything, and doing it all with friends. In 2021 we had a number of major breakthroughs, receiving a prestigious American grant and coming across a wealth of archive footage from people’s home videos, student films, and TV shorts. It became obvious that with all this material our documentary could become the definitive of Justo’s life and construction.

We spent the next two years simultaneously shooting and editing, going through a number of rough cuts and shaping the film in a way that would create the most intimate portrait of Justo Gallego. For me, the experience of making the documentary was life changing not only professionally, but also on a personal level. Justo was such a unique character that one cannot not be affected by him. I think he provides us with a mirror — asking us the most fundamental questions about the meaning of life and what to do with it — and it is precisely this dimension of him that forms the bedrock of the film.

- Denis Dobrovoda