SHORTLISTED - Academy Awards Documentary Feature Directing Award | US DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION - Sundance Film Festival | NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW - Top Five Documentaries of 2023 | THE UNFORGETTABLES - Cinema Eye Honors
Spiritual Care • Chaplaincy • Clinical Pastoral Education (CP) • Faith • Healthcare • Mental Wellbeing • Spiritual Questioning • Agnosticism • Judaism • Christianity • Humanism
Date of Completion: 2023 | Run Time: 93 minutes | Language: English with English, Spanish, French subtitles | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript | Director: Luke Lorentzen | Producers: Kellen Quinn & Luke Lorentzen | Executive Producer: Robina Riccitiello | Co-Producer & Additional Editor: Ashleigh Mcarthur | Camera & Editing: Luke Lorentzen | Consulting Editor: Mary Lampson
In most US hospitals, alongside medical responses to illness and injury, lesser-known interventions take place every day. Responding to patients, family members and hospital staff who are experiencing spiritual and emotional distress, chaplains sit at bedsides, helping people to deepen connections with themselves, one another, and a world beyond this one. A STILL SMALL VOICE follows Mati, a chaplain completing a year-long residency at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital, as she learns to provide spiritual care to people confronting profound life changes. Following his acclaimed 2019 film MIDNIGHT FAMILY, director Luke Lorentzen digs into Mati’s spiritual work as an entry point to explore how we seek meaning in suffering, uncertainty, and grief. Through Mati’s experiences with her patients, her struggle with professional burnout, and her own spiritual questioning, we gain new perspectives on how meaningful connection can be and how painful its absence is. As Mati and her patients take stock of their lives and experiences, space opens up to reflect on our own.
“Exquisite and extraordinarily intimate.”
Alissa Wilkinson | The New York Times
“Absorbing.” “One of the best films of 2023.”
Alissa Wilkinson | Vox
“The grace that flows off the screen is gutting.”
Amy Nicholson | The New York Times Critics Pick
“It’s human and messy — and it’s divine.”
Christian Blauvelt | IndieWire
“Give[s] voice to America’s collective grief in a way that little else has.”
Anthony Kaufman | DOC10 Chicago
“A STILL SMALL VOICE is suffused with such sensitivity, poignancy, and artistry that it’s already being hailed as one of the best documentaries of the year. . . . A profoundly piercing chronicle of an individual under pressure and an institution in crisis.”
Sheri Linden | The Hollywood Reporter
“Penetrating and deeply moving. . . . Unforgettable.”
Kim Yutani | Sundance Film Festival Director of Programming
“One of the more fascinating journeys I saw this year.”
Pat Mullen | POV Magazine
“One of the most rewarding character studies audiences will see this year. . . . therapeutically moving and a work of radical empathy for turbulent times.”
Jessica Peña | Next Best Picture
“An illuminating documentary on how pain carries weight on us all. It asks big questions, studies the human psyche, and offers hope.”
Nicolas Rapold | Sight & Sound
“At once an eloquent reflection on mortality and a quintessential document of the emotional and spiritual burdens of great responsibility, Luke Lorentzen’s A STILL SMALL VOICE finds the universal in the particular experience of a hospital chaplain . . . . Lorentzen’s incredibly attuned, efficient filmmaking set this film apart in a crowded field of works on life and death and healthcare.”
Elizabeth Weitzman | The Wrap
“A STILL SMALL VOICE holds wisdom enough to apply to us all. [Mati’s] lack of cynicism and her respect and care for patients and their families is so astounding it feels almost miraculous . . . . The camera sits quietly and nonjudgmentally so that soft-spoken subjects can explore and express the grandest themes imaginable: what it means to live, and how we learn to die.”
Andre Couture | GVN
“Carries immeasurable strength from within.”
Stephen Saito | The Moveable Feast
“Therapeutic and cleansing.”
AWARDS
Shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature | 96th Academy Awards
Directing Award U.S. Documentary Competition | Sundance Film Festival
Top Five Documentaries of 2023 | National Board of Review
The Unforgettables |17th Cinema Eyes Honors Special
Jury Award | Mammoth Lakes Film Festival
Best Documentary Feature Award | Cinema Columbus Film Festival
FILM FESTIVALS
Cleveland International Film Festival
Sarasota Film Festival
Hong Kong International Film Festival
Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival
DOC10
HotDocs
JxJ DC Jewish Film and Music Festival
DC/DOX
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
Gimli International Film Festival
Rockaway Film Festival
Melbourne International Film Festiva
March on Washington Film Festival
Dok Leipzig
Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia
Philadelphia Film Festival
Indie Memphis
Amherst Cinema Bellwether Series
Mental Health Film Festival
EnergaCAMERIMAGE
Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival
SCREENINGS
Laemmle Theaters
Museum of the Moving Image
Vidiots
Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center
Documentary Spotlight Hosted by Thom Powers
Scandinavia House
University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts
NewportFILM (Providence Public Library)
Care Provider, Featured in A STILL SMALL VOICE
Margaret (Mati Esther) Engel is a spiritual care provider, psychedelic chaplain and practicing performance artist. Her clinical background is in hospital chaplaincy, palliative care chaplaincy, and psychedelic-assisted therapy. Mati guides her clients through immersive creative experiences as a means of spiritual inquiry and spiritual emergence. She was the lead subject of a Sundance-winning and Oscar-short-listed film, A Still Small Voice, documenting Spiritual Care and Chaplaincy as a practice during Covid-19 in NYC. Mati also offers psychedelic integration that is informed by her creative praxis and trauma-informed spiritual care. She has since been a Founding Practioner at Labyrxnth, a Modern Spiritual Care Platform, and Facilitates workshops on the intersection of art, theology, and healing. She obtained her M.Div from the University of Chicago and trained in Integral Movement and Performance Practice (IMPP) at Arthaus Berlin in Germany. She completed a two-year foundational intensive in ancestral trauma training, group coherence building, and contemplative practices with Thomas Hübl and has a certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies from Naropa University, where she has taught and facilitated contemplative practice and spiritual assessments.
Mati was raised Hassidic in Ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn and now leads a spiritual lifestyle, that is less religiously binded. She is 3rd generation Holocaust survivor and comes from a lineage of Afghanistani and Pakistani Jewish mystics (Kabbalists). She is often in Berlin, NY, California, and Jerusalem.
Luke Lorentzen is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and lecturer in Stanford University's department of Art and Art History. His most recent film, A STILL SMALL VOICE, follows a chaplain completing a year-long hospital residency. The film won the U.S. Documentary Best Director Award at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, was listed as one of the best ten films of the year by the New York Times, and was shortlisted for the Best Documentary Oscar. Luke’s previous film MIDNIGHT FAMILY (2019) was also shortlisted for the best documentary Oscar after winning over 35 awards from film festivals and organizations around the world including a Special Jury Award for Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival, Best Editing from the International Documentary Association, and the Golden Frog for Best Documentary from Camerimage. Luke’s other work as a director and cinematographer includes the Netflix original series, LAST CHANCE U (2019), which won an Emmy for Outstanding Serialized Sports Documentary. With Kellen Quinn, Luke is a co-founder of the independent production company Hedgehog Films.