Pope Francis - A man of his word

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Movie
German title Pope Francis - A man of his word
Original title Pope Francis: A Man of His Word
Country of production Vatican City , Switzerland , Italy , Germany , France
original language Italian , Spanish , English , German
Publishing year 2018
length 96 minutes
Age rating FSK 0
JMK 0
Rod
Director Wim Wenders
script Wim Wenders,
David Rosier
production Wim Wenders,
David Rosier
Andrea Gambetta
music Laurent Petitgand
camera Lisa Rinzler
cut Maxine Goedicke
occupation

Pope Francis - A man of his word is a documentary film by Wim Wenders from 2018 . The film premiered on May 13, 2018 at the Cannes Festival , where it was shown outside of the competition, and opened in German cinemas on June 14, 2018.

content

The film begins with time-lapse shots of Assisi and a long tracking shot over Giotto's frescoes in the Basilica of San Francesco , which was built in honor of Francis of Assisi. The camera then pauses on the image where Francis has the vision that God is calling him to save the collapsing building of the church. Francis of Assisi is the role model and namesake of the current Pope .

The film alternates sections with recordings of Pope Francis ' worldwide travels , his speeches at the UN , in the US Congress , pictures of different public appearances and scenarios of environmental destruction with picture reports of a few individual encounters, e.g. B. with Erdogan or Stephen Hawking . Interviews by journalists on controversial topics such as child abuse in the Catholic Church or on his attitude to homosexual relationships are documented. The documentaries are interrupted by the extensive interviews that Wenders conducted with the Pope. Interspersed in the documentary are black and white film scenes from the life of Francis of Assisi, shot in the style of silent films.

production

After Wim Wenders' office received a letter from the Vatican in 2013 asking whether Wenders was interested in a film about Pope Francis, after detailed clarification of the conditions under which the project should be carried out, filming began in early 2016.

Wenders' contact person in the Vatican was Dario Viganò , former director of Vatican television , then prefect of the secretariat for communications . Participating producers were The Palindrome, Centro Televisivo Vaticano, Célestes Images, Solares Fondazione delle arti, Neue Road Movies, Decia Films, Fondazione Solares Suisse and PTS Art's Factory. The budget was initially two and a half million euros, one and a half million euros were used, and the remaining million euros were paid into a special account of the Pope for charitable purposes.

Wenders and his team had unrestricted access to the Vatican's film archive prior to production. All public appearances by the Pope are documented by film crews; the Pope's public addresses in the Curia alone are sometimes recorded by four cameras. There was also material from other television stations. This extensive material had to be sifted through and selected; the sighting alone extended over years.

In preparation for the interviews with Franziskus, Wenders and David Rosier drew up a list of over 50 questions, four of which were asked in the two-hour interviews. During the interview, the director did not sit directly across from the Pope, but spoke to him via the monitor of a converted teleprompter (Interrotron), so that the impression of direct eye contact between the Pope and his audience arises.

The black and white sequences about the life of Francis of Assisi were shot with an original hand-crank camera from the 1920s, which Wenders had already used in the 2003 film The Soul of a Man .

The music comes from the French composer Laurent Petitgand , with whom Wenders has worked repeatedly since 1985. The song These Are the Words , sung by Patti Smith , which accompanies the credits, was written by her for this film and recorded by her band with bassist and arranger Tony Shanahan.

reception

In a Spiegel Online article, Kirsten Rießelmann reviewed the film one day after its German theatrical release that the film was “pure kitsch”. With the “filmed encyclical ”, however, the Vatican was “not reprehensible. It's pretty smart. ” A week later, the film critic Rüdiger Suchsland attacked the director on Telepolis as a“ moral trumpeter ”. Wenders wanted to be “the Pope's propagandist”. Suchsland saw no interest in the film "for people or for office".

The film first ran on April 10, 2020 on German television.

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Pope Francis - A man of his word . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ Age rating for Pope Francis - A man of his word . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ a b c Weltexpresso: Interview with Wim Wenders, (author, director, producer) 2018 /
  4. ↑ This is how Wenders came to the documentary about Pope Francis Interview in NDR , June 14, 2018, accessed on July 6, 2018
  5. ↑ Andrea Burtz: Pope Franziskus - A man of his word WDR2 Kino, accessed on July 6, 2018
  6. ↑ Hans-Georg Rodek: Eye to Eye with the Holy Father welt.de, May 13, 2018, accessed on July 5, 2018
  7. ↑ Laurent Petitgand Scoring Wim Wenders' 'Pope Francis - A Man of His Word' in: filmmusicreporter, March 14, 2018, accessed on July 6, 2018
  8. ↑ Interview with Wim Wenders Eye for Film, May 16, 2018, accessed on July 6, 2018
  9. ↑ Kirsten Rießelmann: Private audience for the public . In: spiegel.de . June 14, 2018. Retrieved April 12, 2020.
  10. ^ Rüdiger Suchsland: Pope Francis - A man of his word . In: heise.de . June 20, 2018. Accessed April 12, 2020.
  11. ^ Pope Francis - A man of his word zdf.de, accessed on April 11, 2020