SUMMARY: Robert is a journalist in charge by his newspaper to write an article about Josemaria Escriva, whose beatification is next. Arriving in Madrid, he tries to contact his father Manolo, who he hasn't seen for years. Before a first reluctancy decides to tell his story to his son, because closely connected with that of St. Escrivá. They spent a happy childhood together but then the civil war separated their destinies.

Roland Joffé is an author who asks questions and seeks answers. He does so through the protagonists of his most important films, which are involved in conflicting situations really happened in the recent or remote past; in these contexts, he tries to understand, often tormented, what is right and what is wrong. In some of his works the main characters are two, to witness a different way of reacting to events.
In Mission (1986) the Jesuit Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons) and the adventurer Rodrigo Mendoza (Robert De Niro) respond differently to the unjust imposition to cancel the "holy experiment" carried out, in the name of the Gospel, among the Guarani Indians. If Rodrigo takes weapons to counter the onslaught of the Portuguese troops, father Gabriel organized a procession with the Blessed Sacrament followed by women and children.
In The killing Fields (1984) whose scenery is Cambodia and the atrocities committed by the Red Khmers, Sidney, an American journalist ( Sam Waterston ) decides to return home,  while his cambodian colleague Pran chooses to remain. 
Sidney can't find peace to save himself but not his friend, and begins a long search in an attempt to bring it back home.

Even in There Be Dragons (Encontrarás Dragones ) Joffé takes the viewer into a conflict (the film is set mostly during the Spanish Civil War) and once again the protagonists are wondering, in front of a drama that divides families and rends the conscience, as they should behave. In this work the approach is different than the previous films: the response does not refer to the common sense, the conscience of the individual, but Roland Joffé has found the answers he was looking for in a broader context: in the teachings and example by St. Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei. At the same time as in his previous film, alongside Josemaría a contrasting character, Manolo, is an imaginary childhood friend who will soon choose different paths: in his tormented soul gather vindictiveness, jealousy, and the cynicism of those who don't find no sense in life. but the pursuit of their self-interest.
In 1936 Josemaria was 34 years old, and Joffe is not limited to squirt into short square the adventures of this young priest and his early followers (the difficult life in a Madrid under the threat of raids of the Republicans, the prior approval of Opus Dei, the long march through the Pyrenees to pass in the nationalist zone) ; but still considering himself an agnostic, the author has understood very well the faith that sustained Josemaría in those years, and as the story progresses, it grows in depth to encompass universal themes the meaning of forgiveness, the power lacerating hatred and revenge, the sense of evil that also affects the innocent, the signs with which to grasp the divine providence, the dialogue between religions, the priestly vocation, the vocation to holiness of lay.
The film deals with all these issues without trying to propose, as often happens in many contemporary films, a wise, humane philosophy of life, but focuses on the problem of the relationship between man and God and goes directly to grasp the supernatural with which they should be discussed great moments in history such as small daily choices.
In a dramatic sequence, in the face of violence that target innocent people and priests in Madrid in 1936, the young people accompanying Escriva see a need to react, arming and organizing a form of crusade. Josemaría reminds them that the revolution that makes a Christian is first of all the interior: there can be no hatred between us because we are all children of God, even our enemies; It must be peacemakers and pray for who is wrong.
Another theme that runs throughout the film is that of forgiveness: it recalls the director of the seminary after an argument involving Josemaria and Manolo: "The denial of forgiveness is the only thing that there we will not be forgiven ." And 'forgiveness' that meets at the end of the film Manolo with his son on his deathbed, after years of mutual indifference and combines ideally also Josemaria (who died years before) that he had never ceased to pray for him and write to him regularly.
"The silence of God," the sense of the unfathomable pain that affects even the innocent is addressed repeatedly in different circumstances of the film: from child Josemaria, who after the death of his third sister, asks his mother if she now began to hate God ; to the girl who has been raped and wondering if God is not a monster but then decides to respond with more love and more prayers. It is however up to the Josemaria's nanny (a nice Geraldine Chaplin), trying to get a sense of the divine: "Life is like a string of one of those embroideries woven with other wires. Held together in space and time. It 'hard to guess the model that God is embroidering before it's finished. "
Joffé takes this as other phrases from the rich biography of St. Escrivá but elaborates that creatively within its construction, also allowing himself some understandable variant: the father of Josemaria was a cloth merchant in the film but becomes the owner of a chocolate factory: in this way the transformation of a grain in a valuable chocolate bar thanks to skill and hard work of the workers, becomes the metaphor of a path of sanctification through the activities of a well-made ordinary life.
And thanks to the thorough understanding Joffé has reached the figure of the Saint and the happy interpretation of Carlie Cox that is particularly successful in the Josemaría'scharacter; one can not say the same for Manolo, character built around a table for which we would have expected no idealization of evil in its purest form, but a more human character.
The film runs for two hours, but the Joffé's ability to work between past and present, more stories in parallel, manages to keep high the attention of the viewer up to the end even if its content is so dense that it is easy to get to perceive the need to see it a second time. The film was released in Spain, the United States and Latin America and is available in DVD in Spanish (or English) with subtitles in Italian.

Original title: There Be Dragons
Country: Spain, Argentina
Year: 2011
Direction: Roland Joffé
Screen play: Roland Joffé
Production: Antena 3 Films, Mount Santa Fe
Lenght: 120
Interpreters: Carlie Cox, Wes Bentley, Olga Kurylenko, Geraldine Chaplin, Dougray Scott, Rodrigo Santoro