‘Kidnapped’ Cannes Review: Pope Pius Steals A Boy & The Movie

noting that the film “doesn’t so much pit one faith against another, casting oppressors against oppressed; instead, the film sets individuals against larger institutions.” It has earned $1.14 million in Italy since opening there in late May.Marco Bellocchio, along with his contemporaries Bernardo Bertolucci and Pier Paolo Pasolini, helped redefine Italian and world cinema in the 1960s and beyond. He created the landmark films “Fists in the Pocket,” “China Is Near,” “The Eyes, the Mouth” and “Devil in the Flesh,” among other films amid a career that spans over 50 years.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Cohen Media Group has scooped rights to “Kidnapped,” the latest movie by revered Italian master Marco Bellocchio, which world premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. The drama reconstructs the true tale of Edgardo Mortara, a young Jewish boy who was kidnapped and forcibly raised as a Christian in 19th-century Italy. Described by Variety as a “handsomely mounted period drama,” “Kidnapped” opens in 1858, in the Jewish quarter of Bologna, where the Pope’s soldiers burst into the home of the Mortara family. By order of the cardinal, they have come to take Edgardo, their seven-year-old son. The child had been secretly baptized by his nurse as a baby, and the papal law is unquestionable: he must receive a Catholic education.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the dates of its 77th edition which will take place May 14-25, 2024. This year’s festival wrapped May 27 with Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” winning the Palme d’Or, Jonathan Glazer’s “A Zone of Interest” take home the Grand Prize, and Aki Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves” nabbing the Jury Prize. The jury of the 76th edition was presided over by Ruben Ostlund, the two-time Palme d’Or winning director of “The Square” and “Triangle of Sadness.” The first post-pandemic edition, 2023 was marked by an overall well-received Official Selection lineup and a strong presence of American talent and studios. Some of the anticipated films spotlighted at the festival included Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon”, Todd Haynes’ “May December” and Wes Anderson‘s “Asteroid City,” as well as Disney’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” Pedro Almodóvar’s short film “Strange Way of Life” and Pixar’s “Elemental.”

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. As other formal (and informal) polls suggest, competitions are fluid and subject to change based on buzz and events. Predictions are updated every Thursday. Visit the prediction pages for the respective ceremonies via the links below:

2023 Tribeca Festival in June, Robert De Niro made a splash at the 76th annual Cannes Film Festival, where the Oscar-winner's 45-year-old girlfriend, Tiffany Chen, made her debut on the carpet. Additionally, the actor's latest film,, made quite the impression on audiences during its world premiere. «It was great,» De Niro told ET's Rachel Smith about walking the carpet at the Cannes event with Chen in May.

Ethan Shanfeld Robert De Niro is going from Cannes to Tribeca, as the world-renowned actor prepares to kick off the 22nd edition of the film festival he co-founded in 2001 with Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff. It runs from June 7 to 18 across New York City. De Niro recently appeared at Cannes Film Festival for the world premiere of Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” in which he stars opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. The Oscar-winning actor said there were conversations about premiering the Western crime epic at Tribeca, but that idea never materialized. “We did talk about it a little bit, but it was always Cannes,” De Niro told Variety. “There was talk about whether it should go in competition or out of competition. And we decided out of competition. It made more sense.”

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Nearly every mainstream animated feature (and just about every comic-book movie too) sets a tone and visual design that the audience plugs into; the movie, bold and shiny and clever as it may be, won’t deviate much from that. But the images in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” have an intoxicating unpredictability. The film makes you feel like you’re dropping through the floors of a modern art museum on acid, yet there’s a thrilling moment-to-moment logic to it all. The madly eclectic images express something — an eyeball-tickling explosion of quantum physics, or a subliminal nod to some comic-book style from decades ago that’s so retro it’s new, not to mention bedazzling. This feels like it could have been the first movie designed to earn a thumbs up from Andy Warhol and Stephen Hawking.

Wim Wenders’ Tokyo-based Cannes Competition title Perfect Days has clocked a series of international deals for The Match Factory.

You have to assume that Martin Scorsese is loving life right now. Not only is he just one of the most revered filmmakers of all time, but he is coming off a hugely successful Cannes, where he debuted his latest film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which is now deep in the awards season discussion.

attending the Cannes Film Festival last week, Scorsese visited Italy and had a conversation with Antonio Spadaro, editor-in-chief of the magazine “La Civiltà Cattolica” — translated to the “Catholic Civilization” — Monday.He revealed in the chat that he recently saw the pontiff, 86.“I responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus,” he said. “And I’m about to start making it.”The “Aviator” director — who was raised Catholic and often deals with religious subjects in his films — also spoke with Spadaro about his acclaim for Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1964 epic “The Gospel According to St.

Move aside Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro – Pope Francis is famed director Martin Scorsese’s latest collaborator. On a European tour to promote his films, Scorsese announced his intention to make another movie about Jesus while at the Vatican. "I have responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus," "Scorsese said per reports confirmed by his representative.

Martin Scorsese has announced that he’s making a new film about Jesus after meeting Pope Francis in Italy.The director, who identifies as Catholic, shared the news on Saturday (May 27) during a conference at the Vatican.“I have responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus,” Scorsese said (via Variety), adding: “And I’m about to start making it.”Scorsese was in Rome with his wife, Helen Morris, to attend a conference titled The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination, where he briefly met Pope Francis.The director previously tackled the life of Jesus Christ in his 1988 religious epic The Last Temptation Of Christ, where Willem Dafoe played the lead character.

Fresh from his standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival for his latest film Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese has taken a tour of Italy, including a meeting with Pope Frances in the Vatican, where the Oscar winner also announced his plans to make a film about Jesus. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Martin Scorsese is on a post-Cannes tour of Italy where over the weekend the director, known for having a religious bent, met with Pope Francis and announced that he will make a film about Jesus. “I have responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus,” Scorsese announced on Saturday during a Rome conference at the Vatican, according to multiple reports. “And I’m about to start making it,” the director added, suggesting that this could be his next film. Also on Saturday, before attending the conference – titled “The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination” – Scorsese and his wife Helen Morris met Pope Francis during a brief private audience at the Vatican.

Stars posed up a storm on the amfAR Cannes gala red carpet on Thursday, but Leonardo DiCaprio, as per usual, chose to keep his entrance on the down low.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s RAI Cinema, which has four titles in this year’s Cannes selection, has closed a deal on Ron Howard’s next movie “Origin of Species,” a hot project at the Cannes market starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Ana de Armas, Jude Law and Alicia Vikander. RAI Cinema chief Paolo Del Brocco said the company – which is the film arm of Italian state broadcaster RAI – has teamed up with Rome-based Lucisano Media Group to acquire Italian rights from CAA Media Finance on Howard’s survival thriller penned by Noah Pink (“Tetris”) about a a group of eclectics who turn their backs on civilization and head to the Galapagos. In Cannes, RAI Cinema also picked up Italian rights from Gaumont on family movie “Moon The Panda,” by French humans and animals adventures specialist Gilles de Maistre, known for “Mia and the White Lion”and “The Wolf and the Lion.” De Maistre’s latest, about the friendship between a boy and a panda, is set to shoot later this month in China’s Sichuan mountains.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer The upper deck at France’s Hotel Du-Cap-Eden-Roc offers a stunning coastal view of nearby city Cannes, the kind that Jay Gatsby would covet to peep Daisy Buchanan. On Tuesday, at one of the hottest parties at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, that view belonged to Graydon Carter. Standing alone with a female companion, the creator of the digital publication Air Mail and iconic former editor of Vanity Fair observed not a long-lost love but a cliffside full of movie stars, auteur directors and Hollywood power players. Carter’s Air Mail co-hosted an evening celebrating the 100-year anniversary of Warner Bros. Pictures, the latter represented by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and his top content lieutenants. Leonardo DiCaprio, Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Lily-Rose Depp, Sam Levinson, Jason Statham and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Rebel Wilson and more turned up to toast cinema and each other.

“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.

for minutes of applause. So entrenched is this French farce that trade publications routinely time the euphoria and judge the response to the new films based on the length of the cheering at the Grand Théâtre Lumière. Cannes’ longest-ever roar? Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth,” which premiered there in 2006, at 22 minutes. This year’s fest is in full swing, and so is the ceaseless hand-slapping.Here are Cannes’ standing ovations so far, from triumphant to tepid.The most ecstatic response to a film so far at this year’s festival, which runs until May 27, was for Martin Scorsese’s latest drama. The historical movie from Apple and Paramount brings together two popular Scorsese stalwarts, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, plus last year’s Best Actor Oscar winner Brendan Fraser and Jesse Plemons.

Jessica Kiang Solid, stately and — like the collapsing Papal States of the Italian Peninsula in the late 1800s — just a little too tradition-bound for its own good, Marco Bellocchio’s “Kidnapped,” based on a 19th-century case of religious abduction, opens with an eavesdrop. Anna (Aurora Camatti), the Catholic servant to the Jewish Mortara family of Bologna, pauses on the stairs after a tryst and spies her employers, Momolo Mortara (Fausto Russo Alesi) and his wife Marianna (Barbara Ronchi), murmuring a blessing in Hebrew over their newborn baby boy. It is not clear yet why the sight should make her stop in her tracks, but over the course of over two sedate but mostly absorbing hours, the veteran director follows its repercussions with a singleminded, narrow dedication that sits strangely at odds with the film’s immaculately expansive production design.