THEThe infinite power of faith. A force capable of overcoming barriers, uniting people, putting aside selfishness, skepticism and religious differences. Tonight, on prime time TV (9.15 pm), Sky Cinema Due, and Now in streaming, retrace the history of Madonna’s appearances in the film Fatima, directed in 2020 by Marco Pontecorvo. In a sequence of true events which, more than a century later, they remember how much the innocence of three children helped spread a message of peace and hope to an entire generation.
The story begins in modern Portugal when a well-known writer, Nichols (Harvey Keitel), pays a visit to a convent in the city of Coimbra. He, skeptical and analytical, has to meet Sister Lucia (Sonia Braga), an elderly and religious spiritual who played an important role in the story that happened in the early twentieth century.
Conversations between the two begin to shed light on a decades-old mystery. And they allow us to reconstruct a story that, over more than one hundred years, has fascinated and questioned millions of people around the world. Also thanks to an important cast: Joaquim De Almeida, Goran Visnjic, Stephanie Gil, Alejandra Howard, Jorge Lamelas, Lucia Moniz, Marco d’Almeida, Joana Ribeiro.
Fatima: the plot in Sister Lucia’s story
During the meeting between Nicholas and Sister Lucia the film jumps back in time. And so it projects viewers into Portugal in 1917, told through the words of the nun. She is still the protagonist who, at just ten years old, receives a visit from an angel while she is in the vicinity of a cave near her home, in Aljustrel. The images shown by the angel to the little girl are those of a battlefield in which her little girl sees her brother Manuel, a soldier at the front in the First World War, being the victim of an explosion.
Days later, while with her cousins Jacinta and Francisco, Lucia has another apparition. This time it is the Virgin Mary who visits her. She defines herself as the “Lady of the rosary” e tells the children that they must pray and suffer to end the world conflict. Then he adds that she will appear again in the same place every month for six months.
The children tell the village about their incredible adventure but nobody, not even their parents, believes their words.
However, the story of the apparitions spreads very quickly and so, in the small village, dozens of pilgrims begin to arrive. They are looking for confirmation, for answers to their prayers, but only the three children are able to witness the visits of the Virgin Mary. The children are believed to be insane, undergo thorough examinations, but are finally released when no sign of insanity emerges in them.
The horrors of the First World War
With the direction of photography by Vincenzo Carpineta, the sets by Cristina Onori, the costumes by Daniela Ciancio and the soundtrack by Paolo Buonvino (which includes the final song Gratia Plena, performed by Andrea Bocelli), Sky’s film returns to propose the story of the Fatima apparitions afterwards Our Lady of Fatima and the 1997 Rai fiction, Fatima.
Unlike the previous works, the one directed by Pontecorvo carefully reconstructs the historical context of Europe in the early twentieth century. A continent torn apart by a very long and very violent war, in which poverty, fear and desperation had the upper hand.
Precisely in this context the film highlights the importance of the message of peace, hope and purity spread by the three children of Fatima. A message whose value was officially recognized by the Church with the canonization of Francisco and Jacinta and the start of the process of beatification of Sister Lucia.
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