IT, RFN | 1989 | colour | 157 min
reż|dir Liliana Cavani  pro|pro Roberta Cadringher, Giulio Scanni, Ralph B. Serpe Jost Steinbruchel scen|wr Liliana Cavani, Roberta Mazzoni zdj|ph Ennio Guarnieri, Giuseppe Lanci muz|mus Vangelis mon|ed Gabriella Cristiani ob|cast Mickey Rourke, Helena Bonham Carter, Andréa Ferréol, Nikolaus Dutsch, Peter Berling, Hanns Zischler dys|dis Cinecitta Luce

„I made a film about the first hippie in the history” – that is how Liliana Cavani, the affiliated atheist, speaks in an interview about Francis. Not accidentally for this role of Italian most appreciated saint had she chosen Mickey Rourke, an actor who embodied the cinema rebellion of the eighties. The movie is about the most important episodes of the saint’s life: as a spoiled son of wealthy merchants Francis leads a luxury life. Suffering is alien to him by the time that he sees the atrocities of war with his one eyes. It is then that he becomes interested in the message of the Bible. Through this reading he decides to change his life entirely. Francis gives up all earthly pleasures and since then leads an existence of a beggar at the grace of people and God. Francis is an unusual and unconventional film that on one side portrays one of the most heroic saints and on the other shows a secular man with all his earthly advantages and disadvantages, a rebel, who in a radical and unintelligible for his class way rejects material values.      

AWARDS
1989 Cannes Film Festival – Palme d’Or nomination for Liliana Cavani
1989 David di Donatello Awards – David in category Best Production Design (Migliore Scenografo) Danilo Donati
1989 Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists – Silver Ribbon in category Best Production Design for Danilo Donati and Best Supporting Actor forFabio Bussotti