On Thursday, March 13, at the Palm Theatre, the SLO Film Center hosts Australian writer-director-producer Bill Bennett, who will offer a Q-and-A about his 2024 film The Way, My Way (98 min.), based on his best-selling Camino de Santiago memoir of the same name.
The Camino, as its casually known, is a famed network of Catholic pilgrimages leading to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain. Created in the beginning of the ninth century, hundreds of thousands of people travel the route mostly on foot.
As Bennett explained in his memoir, “I’d never done anything crazy like this before—a pilgrimage walk. I was not a hiker, and I wasn’t a Catholic. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I was a Christian. On the last government census when I had to state my religion, I’d said I was a Buddhist, mainly because they’ve had such a hard time in Tibet, and I felt they needed my statistical support. I was also not an adventure traveler. For me, adventure travel was flying coach.
“All this backpacking and wearing of heavy boots and flying off to France to walk ancient pilgrimage routes was a new experience, and not one that made me feel entirely comfortable.”
Doors open at 6:30 with the screening starting at 7 p.m. and the Q-and-A directly after. Tickets are $12 general or $10 senior at thepalmtheatre.com. The film will continue to play through March 20. See the trailer at thewaymywaymovie.com.
This article appears in Mar 6-16, 2025.