Martin Scorsese has made a film about Pope Francis, "Aldeas, Pope Francis's Last Dream"

Martin Scorsese has made a film about Pope Francis, "Aldeas, Pope Francis's Last Dream". The premiere took place in the Vatican itself, some time after the pontiff's death.

The promotional materials describe the project as "a powerful fusion of the visions of Scorsese and Francis in the realms of art, spirituality and humanity", a movement "beyond traditional cinema", "cinema as an act of resistance".

The man who made "Taxi Driver", "Mean Streets" and "The Departed" is now making this kind of cinema.

The premiere took place on the very day when Trump called the new Pope, Leo XIV, "weak and terrible for foreign policy" and posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus. Against this background, a documentary about humility, cultural dialogue and human dignity looks like an artistic manifesto, even if it is promoted by press releases containing the phrase "intergenerational dialogue through cinema".

Scorsese is 83. He met Francis, gave him a photo album from the set of "Killers of the Flower Moon" and set about making this film. At any rate, nobody is certain to be any the worse for it.

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