First images from Martin Scorsese’s film about Pope Francis

The premiere of the film Aldeas, the Final Dream of Pope Francis took place this Tuesday, April 21 at the Vatican.

“Pope Francis understood that cinema would play a fundamental role in making the culture of dialogue a reality”, says Martin Scorsese.

While the first images of What happens at night were revealed last month, these are those of another Scorsese project which are today shared by Scholas Occurrentes, the global Catholic educational movement founded by Pope Francis. A film shot between Italy, Indonesia, Gambia and the Vatican.

One year to the day after the death of Pope Francis, Aldeas, the Final Dream of Pope Francis was screened inside the Vatican, reports Variety. The feature film delivers an exclusive testimony of Pope Francis, recorded shortly before his death.

“This film is a tribute to the Holy Father”, says Scorsese. “He honors his memory by embodying the spirit of his ministry and his dream of creating a more humane culture. At this moment in history, I believe it is not just a dream but a necessity.”

We already knew the director’s religious fervor, notably depicted in the film The Last Temptation of Christwhich earned him an Oscar nomination for best director. Or his affection for his Sicilian origins, highlighted in the famous The Freedmen. Today, he links his two loves in a tribute film about Pope Francis.

This is what Scorsese reported to Variety last June on the occasion of the Taormina Film Festival: “In a way, I think for me, this (Sicilian connection) combined with the religious experiences sparked a curiosity and a search for my own identity, who I am (…)”.

For his part, the late Pope described the film as “an extraordinarily poetic and profoundly transformative project, because it reaches the very root of human life: our sociability, our conflicts and the very essence of life’s journey”.

This cultural project supervised by Martin Scorsese is directed by Clare Tavernor and Johnny Shipley.

Part of the synopsis has been revealed: “At the heart of the film, entire communities come together to create and share their own stories, including a return by Martin Scorsese to his grandfather’s village in Sicily, where he worked with local young people to make their own film (…)”.