By Matters India
Kolkata, September 5: An international documentary exploring the life and legacy of St. Teresa of Calcutta is set to premiere September 5 evening on the saint’s feast day, highlighting her decades of service to the poor and examining what its producers describe as her enduring message of compassion.
The 66-minute film, Mother Teresa – Prophet of Compassion, will premiere at 6 p.m. at Jesuit-run St. Xavier’s College in Kolkata, located on Mother Teresa Sarani, with Archbishop Elias Frank of Calcutta presiding over the event. The documentary was produced by journalist and author Anto Akkara in collaboration with Atmadarshan TV Indore.
According to the press release, the documentary traces “the Prophetic Path of Compassion Mother Teresa plodded and laid out before the world” through the Missionaries of Charity congregation that she founded in 1950.
Akkara, who interviewed Mother Teresa in 1995 and later covered major events involving the Missionaries of Charity, including her funeral in 1997 and canonization in 2016, uses the film to examine key moments in her life and work.
The documentary also presents accounts of the congregation’s activities in conflict and crisis zones, including Gaza and Ukraine, and recounts incidents involving Missionaries of Charity members in Yemen and Nicaragua.
The production is an expanded version of an earlier release unveiled on the 75th anniversary of the Missionaries of Charity Foundation Day in October 2025.
The updated edition adds more than a dozen new stories, including episodes from Patna, Jharkhand and New Delhi that retrace Mother Teresa’s work across India.
The film also highlights lesser-known anecdotes from her life, including efforts to support people affected by leprosy, children with disabilities and orphans.
Among the stories featured are initiatives involving a leprosy center in Titagarh, an industrial town on the northern outskirts of Kolkata, fundraising for charitable causes and interventions aimed at protecting vulnerable children.
Born Anjezë Gonxha Bojaxhiu in present-day North Macedonia in 1910, Mother Teresa arrived in India in 1929 as a Loreto sister and later founded the Missionaries of Charity. The congregation has since expanded to 138 countries and operates 754 homes with 5,076 nuns serving disadvantaged communities, according to the release.
The documentary includes testimonials and historical reflections intended to address what the filmmakers describe as misconceptions surrounding Mother Teresa’s work. It also features the remark attributed to former West Bengal communist Chief Minister Jyoti Basu: “This lady makes me a bad Marxist, making me believe in Godliness.”
(Photo: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)