Popes

Subterms

    Latest story

    113 Shares93 Views

    Martin Scorsese Interviews Pope Francis in Upcoming Documentary ‘Aldeas’

    by

    The project will highlight scripted short films from international communities along with snippets of a conversation between the director and the pontiff, who died last month.Martin Scorsese will produce a new documentary featuring an on-camera interview with Pope Francis that was recorded at Vatican City in December, a few months before the pope died at the age of 88.The film, “Aldeas — A New Story,” is about the worldwide cultural project developed by Scholas Occurrentes, a global educational movement founded by Francis in 2013, the same year he was elected pope. Communities around the world will create scripts for short films that highlight their identities, histories and values.Snippets of the conversation between the pope and Scorsese will be interwoven into the film, which does not have a release date.In a statement on Wednesday, Scorsese said it was important to Francis for “people across the globe to exchange ideas with respect while also preserving their cultural identity, and cinema is the best medium to do that.” Before the pope’s death, Francis called “Aldeas” a poetic project because it “goes to the roots of what human life is.”The project punctuates a long relationship between the pope and Scorsese, whose work has sometimes been religious in nature. When “The Last Temptation of Christ” was released in 1988, it drew protests and outrage from religious groups.In 2016, Scorsese met with Francis to discuss his movie “Silence,” a drama about a Portuguese Jesuit priest who heads to 17th-century Japan, where Christians are persecuted. They met again in 2023, when Scorsese announced he would make another film about Jesus. The director’s most recent project, “Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints,” dramatizes the lives of eight Catholic saints.Before his death, Francis called “Aldeas” a poetic project because it “goes to the roots of what human life is.”Aldeas Scholas Films, via Associated PressWhen Francis died, Scorsese said in a statement to Variety that he was lucky to have known him and that his loss for the world was immense.“He had an ironclad commitment to the good,” Scorsese said. “He knew in his soul that ignorance was a terrible plague on humanity. So he never stopped learning. And he never stopped enlightening.” More

    More stories

    • 113 Shares113 Views

      in Movies

      Pope Francis, Unlikely Movie Star: From ‘Conclave’ to ‘Francesco’

      by

      In fictional tales and documentaries, directors approached him as a screen character who was both admired and controversial.Watching Edward Berger’s hit Vatican thriller “Conclave” last year, I found it hard not to think of Pope Francis. The film is fictional, based on Robert Harris’s 2016 novel, published three years into Francis’s papacy. But one key character in the film is a Mexican archbishop working in Kabul, a reformer calling on the church to focus on those marginalized and historically excluded by the institution.Plenty separated the “Conclave” character from the sitting pope, who died on Monday, the day after Easter. But such a simple yet eloquent onscreen activist could recall only Francis, the first Latin American cleric to assume the papacy. He drew both admiration and controversy, based largely on his concern for the poor, immigrants and refugees; his calls for environmental stewardship; and his efforts on behalf of gay and lesbian Catholics. That work inflamed more conservative wings of the church while endearing him to many, Catholic or not, who saw a new way forward in his life and teachings.And that also made the pope an unlikely movie star. Francis may have been the most cinematic pope, with fictional and documentary representations of him proliferating during his 12-year papacy. Some of those films were made by and for Catholics, like the 2013 documentary “Francis: The Pope From the New World,” produced by the Knights of Columbus; Beda Docampo Feijóo’s 2015 “Francis: Pray for Me,” a biographical drama about his pre-papal days; and Daniele Luchetti’s 2015 “Chiamatemi Francesco,” or “Call Me Francis,” which concentrated on his work as “the People’s Pope.”But many of these movies weren’t really aimed at an audience of the devout. Instead, they show the source of Francis’s wider appeal. His attention to issues of social and cultural import gave filmmakers a way to approach him as a screen character, not just a religious leader. Here are six such films, which help frame Francis’s legacy and illuminate why he made such an appealing subject.‘Pope Francis: A Man of His Word’ (2018)Buy or rent it on digital platforms.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Conclave’: A Fly on the Wall Inside the Secret Process to Elect a Pope

      by

      A new drama by Edward Berger draws the audience inside this largely hidden tradition. How accurate is it?When a pope dies, cardinals younger than 80 gather at the Vatican to elect his successor in what is known as a conclave. Recent papal elections have offered glimpses of this highly secretive process by allowing television cameras to capture some of the pomp and prayers leading up to the voting.But the world is left hanging the moment a Vatican official solemnly proclaims, “Extra omnes,” Latin for “all out,” and shoos everyone else from the Sistine Chapel before dramatically shutting its immense wooden doors so that the cardinals can begin selecting the next pope.Edward Berger’s new drama, “Conclave,” which opens Friday, catapults audiences back inside the Sistine Chapel for a cinematically rare, if fictionalized, peek at the confidential electoral proceedings of the Roman Catholic Church.“Ancient rituals clashing with modernity,” Berger said, describing the film in a video interview.The film stars Ralph Fiennes as Lawrence, dean of the College of Cardinals, who in the film is responsible for leading the papal election, and Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Lucian Msamati and Sergio Castellitto as papal contenders. They are not based on real people but are instead amalgams of contrasting blocs within the church, traditionalist and progressive, that loosely define existing currents. “It’s all politics in the end,” said Robert Harris, who wrote the 2016 novel on which Peter Straughan based his screenplay.“Conclave” is hardly the first film to involve a papal election, and church-based mystery-thrillers, like Dan Brown’s “Angels & Demons” or Raymond Khoury’s “The Last Templar,” have regularly made best-seller lists.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More