Marco Bellocchio

Marco Bellocchio (Italian pronunciation: [ˈmarko belˈlɔkkjo]; born 9 November 1939) is an Italian film director, screenwriter, and actor. Most known for his films Fists in the Pocket (1965), A Leap in the Dark (1980), Good Morning, Night (2003), The Traitor (2019) and Kidnapped (2023).

Born in Bobbio, near Piacenza, Marco Bellocchio had a strict Catholic upbringing – his father was a lawyer, his mother a schoolteacher. He began studying philosophy in Milan but then decided to enter film school, first at the Dramatic Art Academy of Milan, then the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, and later at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. His first film, Fists in the Pocket (I pugni in tasca, winner of the Silver Sail at the 1965 Festival del film Locarno), was funded by family members and shot on family property in 1965.

Bellocchio's films include China Is Near (1967), Slap the Monster on Page One (1972), Nel Nome del Padre (In the name of the Father – a 1972 satire on a Catholic boarding school that shares affinities with Lindsay Anderson's If....), Victory March (1976), A Leap in the Dark (1980), Henry IV (1984), Devil in the Flesh (1986), and My Mother's Smile (2002), which told the story of a wealthy Italian artist, a 'default-Marxist and atheist', who suddenly discovers that the Vatican is proposing to make his detested mother a saint.

In 1991, he won the Silver Bear – Special Jury Prize at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival for his film The Conviction.

In 1995, he directed a documentary about the Red Brigades and the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, titled Broken Dreams. In 2003, he directed a feature film on the same theme, Good Morning, Night. In 2006, his film The Wedding Director was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. In 1999, he was awarded with an Honorable Prize for the contribution to cinema at the 21st Moscow International Film Festival.

In 2009, he directed Vincere, which was in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival. He finished Sorelle Mai, an experimental film that was shot over ten years with the students of six separate workshops playing themselves. He was awarded with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in September 2011.

His 2012 film Dormant Beauty was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 69th Venice International Film Festival. On 6 September 2012, Bellocchio condemned the Catholic Church's interference in politics after the premiere of his controversial film about a high-profile euthanasia case. The film approaches the topic of euthanasia and the difficulty with legislation on end of life in Italy, which has Vatican City within its borders. The subject is inspired by Eluana Englaro's case. Following the decision of the jury of the Venice Film Festival, which excluded the film from the Golden Lion, Bellocchio has expressed strong criticism against President Michael Mann.

Bellocchio made a big impact on radical Italian cinema in the mid-1960s, and was a friend of Pasolini. In 1968, he joined the Union of Italian Communists (Marxist-Leninist), a Maoist group, and began to make politically militant cinema. However, in a 2002 interview, he talked about divided state of the Italian left, politics' lacking from the aim of radical change, and how such a radical change not being appealing for him anymore: