Kidnapped

Kidnapped (Rapito, 2023) is an Italian historical drama from director Marco Bellocchio — watch it online on iFILM. The film competed in the main selection at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

Bologna, June 1858. Six-year-old Edgardo Mortara is taken from his family by soldiers of the Papal States on a single legal argument: a servant had secretly baptized him as an infant, and under Church law a baptized child could not be raised in a Jewish household. His parents fight back through every channel available — petitions, audiences with officials, appeals to Napoleon III, pressure from Jewish communities across Europe. Pope Pius IX refuses to budge.

Bellocchio isn't interested in a straightforward custody drama. He frames Edgardo's story against the unraveling of the Papal States and the push toward Italian unification — a collision of private grief and historical tectonic shift. The child grows up inside the Vatican while his parents lose him in slow motion, and the film holds both timelines without flinching. Stream Kidnapped (2023) online on iFILM.