Kidnapped

61st New York Film Festival (September 29-October 15, 2023)

Marco Bellocchio excels at grand gestures. The Italian title of the filmmaker’s latest, Kidnapped, appears on screen in large, blood-red letters, like the screaming headline of a tabloid news article. Yet it’s placed over a deceptively serene scene, circa the late-1850s, of servant woman Anna Morisi (Aurora Camatti) strolling into a store across the street from her Bologna-residing employers, the Jewish Mortara family. The clashing juxtaposition of words and images is apt, for none of the characters suspects that history is about to be made.

The Mortara case is one of the most egregious stains on the legacy of the Catholic Church. It captured the world’s attention at a particularly fraught moment, right as the Papal States (occupied Italian territories that had for centuries been under the direct rule of successive popes) were close to permanent dissolution, and global antisemitism was on a genocidal rise.

Read the full review at Slant Magazine

Kidnapped screens 10/03 and 10/08 at EBM Film Center (FBT) and Alice Tully Hall