Marco Bellocchio On Making His Cannes Competition Title ‘Kidnapped’ To “Save” The Pope & Why Steven Spielberg Dropped Out Of Making A Similar Film About The Catholic Church
deadline.com“I didn’t make a film against the pope or to condemn the Pope,” Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio said of his Cannes competition title Kidnapped at the official festival presser this morning.
The pic, directed and co-written by Bellocchio, follows the story of 6-year-old Edgardo Mortara, who was stolen from his Jewish family to be raised in a Catholic seminary on the spurious grounds that a maid had secretly baptized him in the cradle.
Edgardo’s parents, distraught, will do anything to get their son back. Supported by public opinion and the international Jewish community, the Mortaras’ struggle quickly take a political dimension.
But the Church and the Pope will not agree to return the child, to consolidate an increasingly wavering power. “In this story, the pope is the bad guy, but that isn’t what I wanted to show.
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