The Italian, French and German co-production El rapto (Kidnapped), directed and written by Marco Bellocchio and starring Filippo Timi, Fabricio Gifuni and Barbara Ronchi, among others, opens today. The film was awarded a prize at the 68th edition of the Valladolid International Film Week (SEMINCI), winning the award for best screenplay, which Bellocchio co-wrote with Susanna Nichiarelli.
Bologna. The year 1858. The Pope’s soldiers break into the Mortara family home to kidnap their seven-year-old son, Edgardo. The film follows the family’s struggle to try to get their son back in the face of this action by the Catholic Church. Intertwining the public and private spheres, director Bellocchio chronicles this irreparable injustice of abuse of power by the last “king pope” (Pius IX), who firmly opposed the secular society and stood against the historic moment of the birth of a modern unitary nation state in Italy. Under the pretext of an alleged clandestine baptism of a young Catholic maid, the inquisitor of the Holy Office, Pier Gaetano Feletti, ordered the police to forcibly take little Edgardo, who was transferred to the Collegio dei Catecumeni in Rome to be educated according to the precepts of the Roman Church. Only four months later, his parents managed to see him again, and the case went beyond Italian borders and became an international affair. Even Napoleon III makes it known that he “did not like” the kidnapping of Pius IX. A film that keeps the viewer on tenterhooks.
