"With stately restraint, Bellocchio manages to put the audience in an ever-tightening chokehold of tension and outrage." — Wendy Ide, Observer (UK)
"A full-tilt melodrama with the passionate vehemence of Victor Hugo or Charles Dickens." — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
"An expertly paced, gorgeously shot and evocative true story of faith, family, and the power of people coming together to right deeply ingrained wrongs." — Barry Levitt, Empire Magazine
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, their seven-year-old son. The child had been secretly baptized 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’ struggle quickly take a political dimension. But the Church and the Pope will not agree to return the child, to consolidate an increasingly wavering power.