Martin Scorsese’s 2016 religious epic set in 17th-century Japan is Silence.
The film adapts Shūsaku Endō’s 1966 novel and follows two Portuguese Jesuit priests, Sebastião Rodrigues and Francisco Garupe, who travel to Japan in search of their missing mentor, Cristóvão Ferreira. They encounter persecution, hidden Christian communities, and agonizing questions about faith, loyalty, and whether apostasy can be an act of compassion.
Silence is set during the Edo period, when the Tokugawa shogunate suppressed Christianity. Authorities forced suspected believers to step on a fumi-e, an image of Jesus or the Virgin Mary, as proof that they had renounced the religion. The historical setting is linked to the persecution of Japan’s Kakure Kirishitan, or “Hidden Christians.”
The title can be confused with The Mission, another major film about Catholic missionaries, but The Mission is set in 18th-century South America. Silence was a long-developing passion project for Scorsese, who first read Endō’s novel in 1989.