The latest from Italian director Marco Bellocchio depicts the scandalous true story of a Jewish child who was abducted from his family by the church under orders from the Pope. In 1858, in the Jewish quarter of Bologna, the Pope’s soldiers burst into the home of the Mortara family. By order of the cardinal, they have come to take Edgardo (Enea Sala), their seven-year-old son. The child had been secretly baptised by his nurse as a baby and the papal law is unquestionable: he must receive a Catholic education. Edgardo’s parents, distraught, will do anything to get their son back. Supported by public opinion and the international Jewish community, the Mortaras’s struggle quickly takes a political dimension. But the Church and the Pope will not agree to return the child.

Notes by David O’Mahony