Blood of my Blood is a summary of all Marco Bellocchio’s cinema.

In this movie we find lots of Bellocchio‘s favourite topics: the figure of the brother who commits suicide (subject also used in Gli Occhi, La Bocca; but he was unhappy with the result), the topic of the two single sisters, his favourite city Bobbio where he spends lot of his holidays with his family and where he organises movie summer courses, the religion issue,… as to close a circle before his next totally different project: a script from the bestseller Italian novel Fai Bei Sogni by Massimo Gramellini.

Blood of my Blood is a two-part film starting with a 17^th – century story of a fallen nun and shifting to the same convent (now a prison)  in 21^st century.

Rich of Italian references it can make foreign people feel not enough equipped to catch every path of connection, but, as every Bellocchio‘s movie, Blood of my Blood is so rich everyone can find a lot to think about.

As we said this is a two-part movie; it is born from a short project made during one of Bellocchio‘s summer school class. Actually the short part is the very last part of the movie.

In the Medieval tale, a confessor’s twin brother, Federico, a soldier played by director’s son Pier Giorgio (here you can listen to our Italian/English interview with him) arrives at the convent door to extract a confession from the nun who seduced his brother. Federico is resolved to find out what happened and give his brother’s soul rest in a consecrate land.  But, as he spends more time around Benedetta, he too starts to fall under her spell. When she gives him the closure cell key, he comes to the riverside. Here he sees his own brother immerging  himself into the water till to disappear. Federico throws the key in the river and we see it touch the depth near another identical one.

In the second, present-day story, the mood turns to comic, impression of a nation that is not able to look forward, anchored to the past and unable to change its status quo. As the first part, this section starts with a knock at the now former convent door. This time is a Russian billionaire  whit a local government officer (Pier Giorgio Bellocchio again) who wants to buy the place and convert it in a luxury rehab clinic.

The 75-year old director asks the audience to draw connections between the two stories implying links between an apparently long-dead social order.

Blood of my Blood is a movie that is just a whisper and that leaves a lot of question marks to think about…and this is exactly the real straight of this great movie.

“YOU CAN’T STOP TIME”