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Antonio Vivaldi, the Italian Baroque composer and violinist who penned “The Four Seasons,” will be portrayed in “Primavera,” the feature debut of Damiano Michieletto, a leading opera director. Memento International has boarded the film which begins shooting this month in Rome and Venice.

“Primavera” was penned by Ludovica Rampoldi, the award-winning screenwriter of movies such as “The Traitor” and “Gomorrah – the series,” among others. The script is loosely adapted from Tiziano Scarpa’s critically acclaimed novel “Stabat Mater.”

Set in 18th century Venice, “Primavera” follows Cecilia, a 20-year-old violin virtuoso who lives at the Pièta orphanage. Despite her talent, Cecilia remains confined within the orphanage, knowing that marriage is the only way out. Yet, her life takes a turn after she meets Antonio Vivaldi, a brilliant and ambitious composer who becomes the new violin teacher. Guided by Vivaldi and his music, Cecilia “finds the strength to challenge the destiny that once seemed inevitable,...

Kidnapped imagines every parent's nightmare: what happens when your child is taken from you? And even worse, what if that horrifying reality is enshrined in law, the very thing you’d hope would help you receive justice? It’s hard not to get swept up in the emotions of Marco Bellocchio’s Kidnapped and the story of young Edgardo Mortara (Enea Sala), taken from his family and forced into a life of Catholicism. Writer-director Bellocchio’s visual language is essential to the storytelling: this is a staggeringly beautiful film, and its vast sense of scale effectively highlights the overwhelming struggle of the Mortara family and Edgardo’s personal crisis of faith.

Based on a true story, Bellocchio’s script manages to make a thorny and complicated history feel accessible, tracing decades of conflict into an accessible two-plus hours. A historical drama about conflicting faiths might sound daunting, but this is immaculately paced and emotionally driven,...

Solid, stately and — like the collapsing Papal States of the Italian Peninsula in the late 1800s — just a little too tradition-bound for its own good, Marco Bellocchio’s “Kidnapped,” based on a 19th-century case of religious abduction, opens with an eavesdrop. Anna (Aurora Camatti), the Catholic servant to the Jewish Mortara family of Bologna, pauses on the stairs after a tryst and spies her employers, Momolo Mortara (Fausto Russo Alesi) and his wife Marianna (Barbara Ronchi), murmuring a blessing in Hebrew over their newborn baby boy. It is not clear yet why the sight should make her stop in her tracks, but over the course of over two sedate but mostly absorbing hours, the veteran director follows its repercussions with a singleminded, narrow dedication that sits strangely at odds with the film’s immaculately expansive production design.

Six years later, the Mortara family has itself expanded greatly. The boy, Edgardo...

At 83 years-old, Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio has been on a hot streak these past years, with the success both at home and abroad of his 2019 Sicilian mafia epic, The Traitor, and his first ever TV miniseries, Exterior, Night, playing well around Europe.

His latest feature — the 31st in a prolific career that began at age 24 with his breakout drama, Fists in the Pocket — is probably not his greatest, but that’s not really a put-down in a filmography filled with memorable work, including other recent movies like Vincere and Good Morning, Night.

Kidnapped (Rapito), a period piece about a Jewish boy taken away from his family to live in the Vatican in 1858, may not be on par with those titles, but it’s still an engaging and somewhat fascinating film, telling a true story that probes historic Italian antisemitism and the follies of the Catholic church.

Filled with the director...