Run time: 134 mins

Based on the true story of a young boy kidnapped by papal authorities, this Dickensian drama lays bare bigotry and the abuse of power in the Catholic church.

Edgardo Mortara (Enea Sala) a young Jewish child in Bologna who, in 1858, when he was six, was taken away from his family. This was done because Edgardo’s doting Catholic nursemaid had claimed that when Edgardo was a baby, and apparently in dire sickness, she had presumed to carry out an emergency baptism, because she feared Edgardo would die and go to limbo. The fanatical Inquisition authorities believed that the Jewish family would therefore “sacrifice” the now-Catholic child, and jumped at the chance to punish the Jewish community and inflate their own missionary self-importance. Edgardo, extensively brainwashed, grew up to be a priest and vehement partisan of the church.

Edgardo’s father (Fasuto Russo Alesi) tries to settle things between men, reasoning with the church. His wife Marianna (Barbara Ronchi), however, is a mother on the warpath with no appetite for compromise. Marco Bellocchio has created a gripping, heartbreaking true-political crime story from the pages of history