Martin Scorsese producing documentary featuring Pope Francis’s final on-camera interview

The documentary will focus on the late pope’s interest in cinema, education, and community building

Martin Scorsese is set to produce a documentary which will feature a series of conversations between the late Pope Francis and the director, as well as the pontiff’s last on-camera interview.

Titled Aldeas — A New Story, the documentary is also being produced by the film production company of Scholas Occurrentes, an international non-profit organisation founded by Pope Francis in 2013.

The subject of the documentary is a cinema programme named Aldeas, which will focus on the late pope’s interest in cinema, education, and community building as “not only a means of expression but a path to hope and transformation”. The documentary will reportedly show young people in Indonesia, Gambia, and Italy who are part of the programme and their journey making short films.

“Through hands-on workshops, communities from around the globe will create scripted short films that celebrate their unique identities, histories, and values,” a press release said. “The behind-the-scenes stories of these shorts will be interwoven with previously unseen conversations between Pope Francis and Scorsese.”

No release date has been announced yet for the documentary.

“Aldeas is an extremely poetic and very constructive project because it goes to the roots of what human life is, human sociability, human conflicts … the essence of a life’s journey,” Pope Francis said in a statement before his death earlier this month.

“Now, more than ever, we need to talk to each other, listen to one another cross-culturally. One of the best ways to accomplish this is by sharing the stories of who we are, reflected from our personal lives and experiences,” said Scorcese.

“It helps us understand and value how each of us sees the world. It was important to Pope Francis for people across the globe to exchange ideas with respect while also preserving their cultural identity, and cinema is the best medium to do that.”

In 2023, Scorsese announced that he would be making a film on Jesus after he had a meeting with the Pope (EPA)

In 2016, the Shutter Island director hosted a private screening of his film Silence, adapted from Shūsaku Endō’s 1966 novel about 17th-century Jesuit priests and the persecution of Christian converts in Japan, in Vatican City. The film starred Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano, Ciarán Hinds, and Liam Neeson, and was nominated at the Oscars for best cinematography,

In 2023, Scorsese announced that he would be making a film on Jesus after he had a meeting with the Pope.

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“I have responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus,” he said at the time. “And I’m about to start making it.”

After Pope Francis’ death on 21 April, Scorsese paid him tribute, describing him as “a remarkable human being”.

“The loss for me runs deep – I was lucky enough to know him, and I will miss his presence and his warmth. The loss for the world is immense. But he left a light behind, and it can never be extinguished,” he said in a statement.