PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Abel Ferrara, director of the film Padre Pio.
Abel Ferrara talks about his latest film, Padre Pio. The film was presented at the Giornate degli Autori, the parallel and independent section of the 79th Venice Film Festival. Aside from speaking about the film and the events it portrays, including the too little talked about massacre at San Giovanni Rotondo of 1920, Ferrara talks about his own spirituality and talks about casting Shia LeBeouf in the role of Padre Pio because he felt the actor was undergoing a similarly profound awakening of his own.
Padre Pio: It is the end of World War I and the young Italian soldiers are making their way back to San Giovanni Rotondo, a land of poverty, with a tradition of violence and submission to the iron-clad rule of the church and its wealthy landowners. Families are desperate, the men are broken, albeit victorious. Padre Pio also arrives, at a remote Capuchin monastery, to begin his ministry, evoking an aura of charisma, saintliness and epic visions of Jesus, Mary and the Devil himself. The eve of the first free elections in Italy sets the stage for a massacre with a metaphorical dimension: an apocalyptic event that changes the course of history.