The curious history of the Vatican Film Library and the preparation of the lists of the best films for the centenary of cinema.

In 1990, during a film congress in Havana, Román Gubern met a Catalan priest named Enrique Planas who turned out to be the leader of an institution that he did not know about: the Vatican Film Archive. When Gubern settled in Rome as director of the Cervantes Institute, the Catalan priest contacted him and proposed that he participate in the Vatican preparations to celebrate the centenary of cinema. This proposal allowed him to investigate the Vatican Film Library, its collection of religious films and the legends around other types of materials; prepare a proposal for a list of the best films with exemplary values (in the book there are three official Vatican lists, where the films are classified according to their religious, social and human and artistic values) and participate in the designation of the patron saint of cinema.