'Kidnapped' tells the historical horror story of an abducted Jewish child

We’re living through days of powerful, often violent religious feeling — stories that might have felt like old dead history now take on a stinging new relevance.

That’s the case with Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara, the ferocious true story of a young Jewish boy forcibly taken from his parents by emissaries of the Pope in 1858. It was made by Marco Bellocchio, the great Italian filmmaker who first burst on the scene 59 years ago with his scorched-earth debut Fists in the Pocket.

Now 84 but still far from mellow, Bellocchio takes us back to the 19th century to tell a historical horror story steeped in Roman Catholic antisemitism.