Marco Bellocchio on How His ‘Kidnapped,’ About a Jewish Boy Abducted by the Church, Is Different From the Film Steven Spielberg Had in Mind

Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet have taken a new step in their relationship. The new celebrity couple is getting to know each other more, and it seems like the Hollywood star has even met the famous Kardashian-Jenner family.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Marco Bellocchio’s drama “Kidnapped” that reconstructs the true tale of a Jewish boy who was kidnapped and forcibly raised as a Christian in 19th century Rome, has opened strongly in Italy following its Cannes launch. The revered Italian auteur’s film about Edgardo Mortara, who in 1858 was taken away from his family in Bologna to live in the Vatican – after it surfaced that the boy secretly been baptized a Christian – has also sparked debate and prompted the Vatican to comment the abduction for which Pope Pius IX has been held responsible. “Kidnapped” over the weekend bowed in third place at the Italian box office, placing itself after “The Little Mermaid” and “Fast X” and pulling a handsome more than €550,000 ($587,000) intake to date from roughly 300 screens.

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

Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber are celebrating their love! On Monday, the 57-year-old supermodel shared photos from her wedding to the 61-year-old Casamigos founder in 1998, along with a heartfelt message to her guy. The caption reads, «25 years ago today, Rande and I got married at the Ocean Club in the Bahamas. It was a picture perfect wedding all captured by @arthurelgort.

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.

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.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian auteur Marco Tullio Giordana, best known internationally for sweeping terrorism-themed epic “The Best of Youth” (2003) is set to soon return behind the camera on “La Vita Accanto” a psychological drama about a talented young woman contending with profound rejection due to her looks. Shooting is set to start on June 5 in Vicenza, Northern Italy, on “Vita Accanto,” (the title can be translated as “the life beside”) which is co-written and produced by Marco Bellocchio – the Italian master who is currently competing for a Cannes Palm d’Or with “Kidnapped.” Italy’s Intramovies has started launching pre-sales on “Vita Accanto” in Cannes.

Fresh off the debut of “Firebrand,” it appears that acclaimed filmmaker Karim Aïnouz has already lined up his next film, “Rosebushpruning.” And as you might expect, he’s already landed an incredible cast to lead the feature. According to The Match Factory and MUBI, Karim Aïnouz’s next film will be titled “Rosebushpruning,” and it will be a remake of the classic Italian film, “Fists in the Pocket.” Exact details about the plot are unknown, but if it follows ‘Fists,’ which was directed by Marco Bellocchio, the film will tell the story of a family dealing with various medical conditions and the effect it has on their relationships.

“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.

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.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Alice Rohrwacher is in the Cannes competition for the third time with “La Chimera,” in which “The Crown” star Josh O’Connor plays a young British archeologist named Arthur who gets involved in an international network of stolen Etruscan artifacts during the 1980s. For Rohrwacher, the film is connected to growing up in Umbria, once the center of the Etruscan civilization. But it’s also the final piece of a triptych on a territory that she started with her previous Cannes entries: “The Wonders” and “Happy as Lazzaro.” Three works that, as she has put it, pose a central question: “What to do with the past?”  

Rozonda «Chilli» Thomas has gotten her son Tron's approval when it comes to her new man, Matthew Lawrence.The 52-year-old TLC artist appeared on Sunday's finale with her bandmate T Boz to perform a medley of the group's hits alongside contestant Lucy Love.ET's Denny Directo spoke with Chilli and T Boz, whose real name is Tionne Tenese Watkins, after the performance where they touched on Tron's approval of Chilli's boyfriend."[It means] everything because Tron is my whole world," Chilli told ET of her 25-year-old son, whom she shares with ex Dallas Austin. «That's my heartbeat, so yeah.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Adrian Wootton, CEO of Film London and the British Film Commission, will preside over the jury of the Malta Film Commission’s inaugural Mediterrane Film Festival celebrating movies from the Mediterranean Basin. The fest, which will take place in Valletta, Malta’s capital, and other locations on the island between June 25-30, will showcase films from each of the MED9 nations, an alliance of nine Mediterranean and Southern European Union member states. It comprises: Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. Besides Wotton the other jury members are “Triangle Of Sadness”actor Zlatko Burić; Cypriot filmmaker Tonia Mishiali; French actor and director Vahina Giocante; Greek producer Amanda Livanou; Italian journalist Boris Sollazzo; Maltese critic Mario Azzopardi; Portuguese journalist and programmer José Vieira Mendes; Slovenian journalist Tina Poglajen; and Spanish programmer Carlos Reviriego.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s Intramovies has acquired global rights outside of Israel and France on Israeli director Dani Rosenberg’s Gaza-Strip conflict drama “The Vanishing Soldier.”  “Vanishing Soldier” is Rosenberg’s second feature after “The Death of Cinema and My Father Too,” which was in the official selection in Cannes 202O and won the Jerusalem Film Festival’s top prize. The film is about an 18-year-old Israeli soldier who flees the Gaza battlefield and heads back to his girlfriend in Tel Aviv only to discover that the military elite is convinced he was kidnapped in the fog of war. What ensues is a tragicomic journey and takes place over a period of 24 hours on the streets of Tel Aviv.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Veteran Italian auteur Silvio Soldini (“Bread and Tulips,” “Emma”) is set to direct “The Tasters,” which will reconstruct the true untold story of the women conscripted to be Adolf Hitler’s food tasters. The Nazi-era drama — which will mark Soldini’s first foray into German-language cinema — is based on the bestselling book “At the Wolf’s Table,” by Italian author Rosella Pastorino, about a group of women who were recruited by the SS in 1943 to make sure that food to be served to Hitler was not poisoned. Forced to eat what might kill them, the tasters start to split into two factions: those loyal to Hitler, and those who insist they aren’t Nazis, even as they risk their lives everyday for the Führer.  “At the Wolf’s Table” has been translated in 46 countries.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Yes, the Cannes Film Festival has only just started. But Hollywood is already quietly planning for the Venice Film Festival lineup, as the unofficial launch of awards season in late August is starting to shape up with several high-profile titles, Variety has learned. Among the films in contention to bow on the Lido: Luca Guadagnino’s sexy tennis comedy “Challengers,” starring Zendaya and Josh O’Connor, and Yorgos Lanthimos’ surrealist science-fiction romance “Poor Things,” with Emma Stone and Marc Ruffalo, among entries believed to be locked-in for a Venice launch. Zendaya was last in Venice in 2021 with “Dune,” but Denis Villeneuve’s sequel, which has an early November launch date, is not expected to follow suit to the fest.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Cinema Italiano is on a roll, as reflected by the fact that this year Italy has scored three Cannes competition slots. Despite the persisting sore spot that sees the country still lagging behind other European territories in terms of post-pandemic box office returns, Italy “continues to produce and invest heavily in film and is overcoming the crisis,” noted Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux after announcing the lineup. The robust Croisette contingent marks the second time in 20 years that Italy lands three Cannes competition berths. Though the trio of selected directors — Marco Bellocchio, Nanni Moretti and Alice Rohrwacher — are all Cannes regulars “they represent three different generations of auteurs,” said Paolo Del Brocco, chief of state broadcaster RAI’s RAI Cinema arm that co-produced all three titles. And each of these films, he went on to point out, displays “very different ideas and cinematic visions.”

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Palestinian-British filmmaker Farah Nabulsi’s upcoming drama “The Teacher,” which is shot and set in Palestine’s Left Bank, has been acquired by top Italian indie distributor Eagle Pictures just as Vincent Maraval’s Goodfellas launches sales on the timely title in Cannes. Goodfellas, formerly known as Wild Bunch, on Thursday will be presenting to buyers the almost completed film that takes its cue from a real prisoners swap that took place in 2011 when Israel freed more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one soldier who had been kidnapped by Palestinian militants. In “The Teacher” a Palestinian school teacher played by Saleh Bakri (“Costa Brava, Lebanon”) struggles to reconcile his commitment to political resistance with his emotional support for one of his students. There is also a subplot involving his romantic relationship with a British volunteer worker, played by Imogen Poots (“The Father”).

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Nine more minutes of footage would take Pedro Almodóvar’s film “Strange Way of Life” from a live action short frontrunner to a best picture contender. To be eligible for the Academy Awards’ best picture category, a film must have a minimum 40-minute runtime. Almodóvar’s movie runs 31 minutes. With those extra nine minutes, we could also highlight the worthiness of actors Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal and the project’s artisan categories. But for his second English language endeavor, coming three years after “The Human Voice” with Tilda Swinton, the Spanish auteur’s sensibilities are never lacking. His new Spanish Western stands proudly next to some of his most audacious movies such as “Talk to Her” and “Volver.”

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent “Killers of the Flower Moon” executive producer Niels Juul is in Cannes with several projects based on IP from the vault of Italy’s storied Cecchi Gori movie company that include a remake of the Dino Risi-directed classic “Il Sorpasso” and “Kafka,” a script about the turbulent love life of Franz Kafka by John Briley (“Gandhi”). The IP and some other assets of the movie company that once dominated Italy’s film industry and collapsed in the mid-1990s were acquired late last year by a group of Italian investors under the new management of Rome-based CEO Federico Canfora and U.S-based Javier Balliero Madrid. Madrid is president of the new company, which is backing a partial relaunch of the Cecchi Gori brand, which is behind such Oscar-winners as “Life Is Beautiful,” “Mediterraneo” and “Il Postino.”