The Church of the Primacy of Saint Peter stands directly on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, at Tabgha, where blocks of black basalt meet the water. Inside, a flat outcrop of rock known as the Mensa Christi, the table of Christ, is venerated as the place of the meal shared by the risen Jesus with his disciples, and of the exchange in which Peter is charged to feed the flock, as recounted in the Gospel of John. Rebuilt by the Franciscans on the foundations of earlier sanctuaries, the present chapel is deliberately austere: rough stone, a single nave, openings that give straight onto the lake, and steps cut into the rock leading down to the shingle. The film follows the site through the changing light of the lake, from the stillness of first morning to the wind that rises in the afternoon, and places the building within the wider archaeological cluster of Tabgha, a group of sanctuaries that has drawn visitors for centuries. What emerges is a site whose power comes not from monumentality but from proximity: a church built at the exact level of the water it commemorates.
