Nineteenth-century Italy. A six-year-old Jewish child is abducted by Papal soldiers who inform his bourgeois parents that the boy was secretly baptized by a maid. If they want him back, they must convert to Catholicism. In the meantime, the boy will be educated in the Vatican at the feet of Pope Pius IX (Paolo Pierobon). There’s an international outcry, but even as the Church loses political ground with the emergence of an Italian state, the Pope remains adamant: the child has been saved.
Marco Bellocchio — 83 and flourishing in the sixth decade of an illustrious career with such acclaimed dramas as The Traitor, Dormant Beauty and Exterior Night — seizes on this true story to mount a fierce denunciation of anti-Semitism and the excesses of the Catholic Church, as well as to chronicle a pivotal chapter in Italian history. Which is not to say you won’t find it resonates with matters closer to home. Bellocchio’s operatic approach is rich, charged, full of fire.
Media Partner
Paolo Pierobon, Fausto Russo Alesi Barbara Ronchi, Enea Sala, Leonardo Maltese
Italy/France/Germany
2023
In Italian with English subtitles
Violence
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Executive Producer
Patrick Carrarin, Maurizio Feverati, Alessio Lazzareschi
Producer
Beppe Caschetto, Simone Gattoni
Screenwriter
Marco Bellocchio, Susanna Nicchiarelli, Edoardo Albinati, Daniela Ceselli
Editor
Francesca Calvelli, Stefano Mariotti
Production Design
Andrea Castorina
Original Music
Fabio Massimo Capogrosso
Director
Marco Bellocchio
Bellocchio was born in Piacenza in 1939. In 1959 he abandoned philosophy studies at the Catholic University of Milan and enrolled at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. His debut feature film, I pugni in tasca (Fists in the Pocket), won an award at Locarno in 1965 and garnered him international recognition. In 2011 he received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice International Film Festival. His work has been the subject of dozens of retrospectives around the world, including at MoMA (New York) in 2014 to commemorate his then 50 years of filmmaking.
Filmography: Fists in the Pocket (1965); Good Morning, Night (2003); Vincere (2009); Blood of My Blood (2015); The Traitor (2019)
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