Kidnapped

The latest by legendary Italian director Marco Bellocchio is a grand, historical fresco depicting the scandalous true story of a young Jewish child who, in mid-19th century Bologna, was abducted from his family by the church under direct 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 seven-year-old Edgardo (Enea Sala). Allegedly, the child had been secretly baptized by his nurse as a baby and papal law dictates that he receive a Catholic education. Edgardo’s distraught parents (played by Barbara Ronchi and Fausto Russo Alesi) battle the Vatican to have their son returned. Supported by public opinion and the international Jewish community, the Mortaras’ struggle quickly takes on a political dimension, all against the backdrop of the riveting true events that shook the world. 

Awash in painterly chiaroscuro evoking the masterworks of Caravaggio and Delacroix, Kidnapped uses light and shadow to convey the baroque drama of the events. Kidnapped is at once a personal, human-scale narrative of a family in crisis who will do anything to retrieve their child from the clutches of a ruthless theocratic government, and a wide-scope portrait of a country on the cusp of revolution.