New film about Dorothy Day to debut on PBS

This looks like appointment television:

She’s been called uncompromising. Prophetic. A peacemaker. No wonder documentary filmmaker Martin Doblmeier admits to having been “afraid” to tackle Dorothy Day as a subject.

The woman who co-founded The Catholic Worker newspaper and movement “was unflinching in her sense that this is my response to how God is calling me to behave,” he said. “We’re all called to do the same, and if we are, that’s why I’m scared. Have I done my share? Have I done my part?”

Yet this towering figure — whose cause for sainthood was opened in 2000 — was also a loving mother and grandmother. Doblmeier explores that side of her, too, in his new film, “Revolution of the Heart: The Dorothy Day Story,” being released later this month. It’s the third in a four-part film series on seminal religious leaders of the last century.

Day, he said, “understood how to live an authentic life,” which he believes will strike a chord with viewers and renew interest in the contrary, complex woman whom Pope Francis called “a great American” during his 2015 speech to Congress. Doblmeier is bringing Day to a wider — and, he hopes, younger — audience at a time when the country needs her more than ever.

“We’re hungry for people who don’t live a duplicitous life,” he said. “She made huge sacrifices in her life for the principles she upheld. I think young people, now as in her own time, will be attracted to her.”

The hourlong film includes commentary by people who knew her, including two of her granddaughters and author Robert Ellsberg, as well as many who were influenced by her, including Social Service Sr. Simone Campbell of Network Catholic lobby and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia). The movie creates a compelling portrait of a woman both familiar and inscrutable.