At 93 years old, Justo is the living embodiment of someone taking an unconventional spiritual path. Coupling the asceticism and the moral rectitude of a monk with the imagination of the architect and the dexterity of a bricklayer, he has been building a Cathedral since 1961.

After being expelled from the monastery where he had entered seven years earlier, Justo Gallego bought a booklet of castles and cathedrals and prepared himself to pave five thousand square meters on an inherited plot of land. He was determined to build a Cathedral honoring the Virgin of Pilar.

Often considered the madman of the town, Justo has invested the last sixty years of his life in this project. His unwavering faith and little more than a piece of dry bread a day have been the only things needed to raise twenty-four domes and eight towers forty meters above the ground over the last sixty years. Of a magnitude that takes one’s breath away, the Cathedral has been erected mostly with donated or recycled materials: wires, plastics, mountains of broken marble, sacks of cement and defective bricks from the neighbouring factory. It is a work of self-taught architecture, and in the eyes of some, a ruin under construction.

By his side, Angel, a former gunner, devout hunter addicted to risk and tobacco, has been helping him for more than twenty years. He lives with Justo in the Cathedral, building, feeding him and caring for his old-age needs. A figure that oscillates between sinner in search of redemption and a devout Christian, Angel is the heir assigned by Justo to finish the work.

The documentary portrays the day to day of this peculiar space in the outskirts of the big Spanish capital. With strokes of surrealism, the story dives into the psyche of these two ambivalent characters that make up the bizarre microcosm of the “Cathedral of Faith”.

Built on the grounds of fervor and divine inspiration, the Cathedral is the magnanimous offering to God of a devotee who defies contemporary agnosticism.

Spain Cerdanya Film Festival