10 Films to Watch If You Liked Conclave

As the Roman Catholic Church mourns the passing of Pope Francis and waits to see what impact his successor, Leo XIV, will have, Cinema Paradiso ventures inside the Vatican to explore the secret world of Conclave.

How odd it must have been for the cast and crew of Edward Berger's Conclave during awards season. As they were attending press conferences and glitzy ceremonies, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church was fighting for his life in hospital. Isabella Rossellini spoke for everyone when she said: 'First of all, we would like to wish Pope Francis a quick recovery. We are very, very worried for our pope. We love this pope - Papa Francesco, Pope Francis. We wish him well. We wish him to recover.'

Of course, he did make a miraculous recovery from pneumonia and returned to Vatican City. However, the day after he had greeted the Easter Sunday crowd in St Peter's Square during the 'Urbi et Orbi' speech, Pope Francis suffered a fatal stroke and world leaders gathered for his funeral the following Saturday. After the customary nine days of morning, the cardinalate re-assembled in Rome for the conclave that would elect the 266th successor of Simon Peter the apostle chosen by Jesus Christ as the rock upon whom He would build His church.

Even though the process has been recurring for centuries, it's not widely known what exactly happens after the eligible cardinals under the age of 80 are sequestered in the Sistine Chapel. However, Edward Berger's adaptation of Robert Harris's bestselling novel, Conclave, has given us the most plausible glimpse yet into the ritual and the politicking that takes place behind closed doors during the election of a new pontiff.

Cinéma du Papa

Dating back to 33 AD, the papacy is the world's oldest form of monarchy. It's apt, therefore, that a pope should have been the first reigning ruler to have appeared in a moving picture. Born in 1810, Leo XIII was not only cinema's first pope, but he was also the earliest-born person to be filmed. It was long believed that Lumière associate Vittorio Calcina was behind the camera. In fact, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson photographed Leo in the Vatican Gardens in July 1896 and even persuaded him to take a ride in his carriage (the first Popemobile) and bless the camera. However, the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company lost the right to exhibit the 75mm footage, as it had allowed screenings to take place at fairgrounds and vaudeville halls, which the Vatican considered to be 'lascivious' places. The licence passed to the Lumières and it took over a century for the true provenance to emerge when an academic went rootling in the Vatican Archive.

Leo's successor, Pius X consented to be filmed by newsreel cameras in 1907 and 1914. As he would be canonised in 1954, he became the first saint to appear on film. He was also probably the first to have a biopic made of his life, as Henri Vidon played Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto in Umberto Scarpelli's The Secret Conclave (1952), which was the first feature to recreate a papal election.

Ironically, Pius X disapproved of moving images and forbade their exhibition in churches in 1909. Elected shortly after the outbreak of the Great War that he considered 'the suicide of civilised Europe', Benedict XV seems to have been reluctant to appear before the camera. But he was filmed by an American newsreel company being carried in the sedia gestatoria, a long-standing tradition that was abandoned in 1978. History was made in 1922, when the announcement of Benedict's death and his funeral mass were recorded by newsreel cameras, with the Pathé and Gaunmont British footage being available to view online.

Events surrounding the conclave and the 'Habemus Papam' proclamation of a new pontiff were filmed for the first time in 1922, when Pius XI ascended the Chair of St Peter. At the time, the occupant was known as 'the Prisoner of the Vatican', as the pope had been confined to the city since the Papal States had forcibly become part of a united Italy in 1870. However, the Vatican City State was established by the Lateran Treaty signed by Pius XI and Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, in 1929. Indeed, the pope even used the cameras to record the dictator's visit to the Vatican in 1932 in order to show that Church and State could do business together. However, the situation changed when Adolf Hitlcr came to power in Germany in January 1933.

Pope Pius was suspicious of the power that films had to influence the minds of his flock and he urged film-makers to remember their moral responsibility in depicting daily life in the June 1936 encyclical, Vigilanti Cura. This was to have a considerable impact on the way films were monitored in Hollywood, as it prompted the Catholic Legion of Decency to put pressure on the Production Code Administration to uphold the rules by which the studios had agreed to make their pictures.

Cameras covered the funeral of Pius XI in February 1939, as well as the accession of his successor. Moreover, Conclave and Coronation of Pius XII (1939) marked the first time that a documentary short had been dedicated to a pope. After he and his predecessor were included in Allyn Butterfield's Cavalcade of Faith (1941), Pius was the subject of Pastor Angelicus (aka The Story of the Pope, 1942), the first papal feature-length actuality, which was co-directed by Romolo Marcellini and Luis Trenker, who had co-starred with Leni Riefenstahl in Arnold Fanck's silent 'bergfilm', The Holy Mountain (1926).

As a former papal envoy to Germany, Pius XII was well aware of the reprisals that Hitler might decide to take if he spoke out about his racial and religious policies. Thus, throughout the Second World War (and from 1943 with Rome under Nazi control), the pope made no public utterance on the Holocaust. Eight decades on, opinion remains divided over whether Pius was the Oskar Schindler of the Vatican, a moral coward, or a furtive conspirator. Numerous features have examined the issues, including Frank Perry's Monsignor (1982), Jerry London's The Scarlet and the Black (1983), Costa-Gavras's Amen (2002), and Christian Duguay's Pius XII: Under a Roman Sky (2010), in which the pontiff was respectively played by Leonardo Cimino, John Gielgud, Marcel Iures, and James Cromwell. Even more potent are such documentaries as Arnold Schwartzman's Genocide (1982), David Naglieri's A Hand of Peace: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust (2009), Liana Marabini's Shades of Truth (2015), Christopher Cassel's Pope vs Hitler (2016), and Steven Pressman's Holy Silence (2020).

The election of Cardinal Angelo Roncalli in 1958 was widely seen as a stop-gap measure after so much controversy. But John XXIII turned out to be a much-loved reformer, who called the Second Vatican Council that transformed the Catholic Church. He was played by Ed Asner in Giorgio Capitani's John XXIII: The Pope of Peace (2002) and by Bob Hoskins in Ricky Tognazzi's The Good Pope: Pope John XXIII (2003). However, his papacy only lasted five years, although John's work was continued by Giovanni Batista, who took the name of Paul VI. He was the last pope to have been born in the 19th century, some 18 months after Leo XIII had first appeared on camera.

Fabrizio Gifuni took the lead in Fabrizio Costa's Paul VI: The Pope in the Tempest (2008), while Fabrizio Pugliese essayed the pope in Michal Kondrat's Prophet (2022), a biopic of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski (Slawomir Grzymkowski), who had stood up to the Polish Communist Party as Archbishop of Cracow. The death of Paul VI sparked what became known as 'the Year of the Three Popes', as his successor, Albino Luciani, died just 33 days after the conclave that had elected Pope John Paul. Neri Marcore starred in Giorgio Capitani's Pope John Paul I: The Smile of God (2006), which was released the year after the passing of his successor. Francis Ford Coppola also drew on the suspicious circumstances surrounding the pope's death in The Godfather Part III (1990).

The first non-Italian pope for 455 years, Pole Karol Wojtyla became the second-longest verifiably reigning pontiff since Pius IX, who was played by Gianni Bonagura in Marco Bellocchio's Kidnapped (2023). Initially seen as a breath of fresh air, whose election did much to bring down the Iron Curtain, John Paul II became increasingly conservative as he grew older and lost popularity because of his inactivity in relation to the child sex scandal that was explored by François Ozon in By the Grace of God (2018). The best biopic of the new pope was the first, which was directed by compatriot, Krzysztof Zanussi. Cezary Morawski played the priest rising through the ranks of the Polish clergy in From a Far Country (1981), since when, the pontiff has been played by Albert Finney in Herbert Wise's Pope John Paul II (1984), Cary Elwes and Jon Voight in John Kent Harrison's Pope John Paul II, Thomas Kretschmann in Jeff Bleckner's Have No Fear: The Life of Pope John Paul II (both 2005), and Piotr Adamczyk in Giacomo Battiato's Karol: The Man Who Became Pope (2005-06).

Cinema Paradiso has several documentaries featuring John Paul II, the pick of which is Judith Dwan Hallet's Witness to Hope: The Life of Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II (2002). But do type his name into the Searchline for more options. Frustratingly, however, these don't include John Paul II: The Friend of All Humanity (2006), which was the first animated feature about a pope.

German Joseph Ratzinger began his pontificate as Benedict XVI in April 2005. In February 2013, however, he made history by becoming the first pope to abdicate voluntarily since Celestine V in 1294. Benedict was played by Anthony Hopkins in Fernando Meirelles's The Two Popes (2019), which also cast Jonathan Pryce as Jorge Bergoglio, the Argentinian cardinal who would become Pope Francis. He was also portrayed by Rodrigo de la Serna and Sergio Hernández in Daniele Luchetti's Chiamatemi Francesco (2015). But Francis was keenly aware of the power of cinema and became the first pontiff to headline films, such as Fisher Stevens's Before the Flood (2015), Wim Wenders's Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (2018), Evgeny Afineevsky's Francesco (2020), Gianfranco Rosi's In Viaggio: The Travels of Pope Francis (2022), and Marius Sánchez and Jordi Évole's The Pope: Answers (2023). Francis will also be seen posthumously in Aldeas: A New Story, which has been directed by Martin Scorsese, who appeared alongside then partner Isabella Rossellini in Renzo Arbore's satirical comedy, Il Pap'occhio (1980), which was so scathing in its criticism of the papacy and the Catholic Church that it was banned.

Turning the Page

Robert Harris was inspired to write about the election of a pope while watching television coverage of the conclave that selected Pope Francis after five ballots in March 2013. At the time, he was completing the Cicero trilogy of Imperium (2006), Lustrum (2009), and Dictator (2015) and he noticed the similarities between the conduct of affairs in the ancient Roman Forum and the Sistine Chapel. He told the BBC: 'Just before the Pope reveals himself on the balcony, the windows on either side fill up with the faces of the cardinal electors who've come to watch him. I looked at their faces, all elderly men, crafty, some very benign and holy, some looking quite cynical. And I thought, "Oh my God, I'm looking at the Roman Senate."'

Although the conclave process has long been shrouded in secrecy, Cardinal Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini made a detailed record of events preceding his elevation as Pius II in 1458. His showdown with French cardinal, Guillaume d'Estouteville, was recreated in Christoph Schrewe's The Conclave (2006), which deserves to be much better known, as it presaged the skulduggery surrounding Pope Alexander VI that was recreated with such relish in mini-series like The Borgias (1981), The Borgias (2011-13), and Borgia (2011-14).

While researching his text, Harris spoke to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor about the sequestered proceedings inside the Sistine Chapel and, when he read the manuscript, the cleric exclaimed, 'This is exactly what a conclave is like. Your central cardinal is exactly as we cardinals would wish to be.' Whether or not she knew of this ringing endorsement, British producer Tessa Ross was so intrigued by the first two chapters that she and Juliette Howell, her partner at House Productions, took an option on the property because, as luck would have it, she happened to share office space with documentary makers who were friendly with Harris's agent. Not that Ross and Howell needed much introduction. Tap their names into the Cinema Paradiso Searchline to discover titles on which they have worked in addition to those Best Picture winners, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and Steve McQueen's 12Years a Slave (2013).

Having met with Harris to confirm the rights deal in 2016, Ross decided to ask Peter Straughan to write the screenplay. He had earned an Oscar nomination with his late wife, Bridget O'Connor, for adapting John Le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for Tomas Alfredson in 2011. More pertinently, he had scripted the BBC's take on Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (2015) and the overlapping themes of religion and political manoeuvring clearly appealed. A former altar boy who had lost his faith, Straughan read the novel in a single sitting and later explained: 'Movies about elections and sports are about as naked as conflict can get on the surface.'

While he took a private tour of the Vatican and met with a sympathetic cardinal prior to starting work on the scenario, Ross began searching for a director. As an admirer of his tele-adaptation of Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose (2018), she had approached Edward Berger at the Cannes Film Festival to propose a collaboration. Ross had suggested a number of projects, but none had appealed. Eventually, she mentioned Conclave and Berger was so hooked on Straughan's draft text that he readily signed up. Indeed, he kept working on the screenplay via Zoom while shooting his 2022 version of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, which had won the Academy Award for Best Picture when Lewis Milestone had filmed it in 1930. As Ross later joked about the German, 'He can juggle about 130 projects at the same time.' After several months, the script was ready.

Behind Closed Doors

When the pope dies unexpectedly, Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), the Dean of the College of Cardinals, seals up the papal apartments and calls a conclave to elect a successor. He favours Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci), a progressive Italian cardinal who can be trusted to continue the late pontiff's reforming work. However, compatriot Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castellito) is an entrenched conservative, who wishes to restore some old traditions. Nigerian Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) is keen to slow the push towards relaxing social policies relating the status of women and same-sex relationships, which means that the conflicted cardinals could turn to a moderate candidate, such as Canadian, Joseph Tremblay (John Lithgow), to prevent a damaging schism.

Before the cardinalate is sequestered in the Sistine Chapel, Lawrence is informed by Archbishop Janusz WoŸniak (Jacek Koman), the Polish prefect of the papal household, that the late pope had stripped Tremblay of his position during their final meeting for an undisclosed misdemeanour. The Canadian denies the accusation and warns Lawrence not to listen to gossip designed to clear Tedesco's path to the Chair of St Peter. Nevertheless, the Englishman asks assistant Monsignor Raymond O'Malley (Brían F. O'Byrne) to look into the matter.

Lawrence is also distracted by the arrival of Vincent Benitez (Carlos Diehz), who claims to be the Cardinal Archbishop of Kabul, whose appointment had remained 'in pectore' (or 'unannounced') because of the dangerous nature of his ministry. Deciding that the Mexican should be included in proceedings, Lawrence introduces him before supper at the refectory in the Casa Santa Marta, which has been overseen by Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini), the nun in charge of the papal guest house. Tedesco tries to lobby Lawrence over a glass of wine, but he is in no mood to be browbeaten, as he has no desire to see the Catholic Church take what he considers to be a backward step.

In his homily before voting commences, Lawrence reflects on the doubts that have been troubling him by reminding his fellow cardinals that certainty breeds arrogance and precludes the mystery that is essential for faith. The first ballot follows, but fails to produce a two-thirds majority, despite Adeyemi leading Tedesco, while Bellini and Tremblay lag further behind. Lawrence draws a handful of votes, while Benitez is one of many cardinals to receive nominal support.

As the voting papers are burnt and black smoke billows out of the cast iron chimney on the Sistine Chapel roof, the cardinals retire for the night. While the other cardinals have no contact with the outside world, Lawrence is still able to consult with Monsignor O'Malley, who discloses that the late pope had paid personally for Cardinal Benitez to undergo treatment at a clinic in Geneva. However, he had not kept the appointment. Puzzled but not concerned, Lawrence returns to the Casa Santa Marta, where Bellini reminds him that he will split the liberal cause if his supporters keep voting for him. Lawrence denies any ambition and is stung when Bellini questions his integrity.

Having heard a male and a female voice in heated argument during the night, Lawrence is less surprised than most when Adeyemi loses his temper with one of the nuns waiting at table the next day. On questioning Sister Shanumi (Balkissa Maiga) about the incident, Lawrence discovers that she had given birth to Adeyemi's son years before and Lawrence has to inform the Nigerian that his candidacy is over because the Church cannot afford another sex scandal.

Despite Adeyemi's pleas for a second chance, Lawrence lets the gossip spread among the cardinals. However, he learns from Sister Agnes that Cardinal Tremblay had arranged for Sister Shanumi to come for Rome. The Canadian insists that the pope had asked him to handle the matter, but this only convinces Lawrence of Tremblay's mendacity and corruptness. Departing from tradition, he breaks into the pope's sealed quarters and finds damning evidence of simony in a report hidden in a secret compartment in the wall.

Rather than be pleased with the discovery, Bellini urges Lawrence to keep the document secret, as it could cause Tremblay's supporters to defect to Tedesco. Driven by conscience, however, Lawrence confronts Tremblay in the refectory and Sister Agnes takes the unusual step of intervening to confirm Tremblay's infamy. An apologetic Bellini tells Lawrence to take on Tedesco in the next ballot. But, as Lawrence is about to vote for himself, a bomb explodes in an upper window of the chapel and knocks him to the floor.

O'Malley brings news of other terrorist attacks across Europe and Lawrence calls an emergency meeting of the cardinalate at the Casa Santa Marta. Tedesco is furious and vows that his papacy would stop pussyfooting around other religions. But Benitez draws on his experience of the Muslim world to accuse the cardinals of being out of touch with the real world. He also reminds them that they have a religious rather than a political duty when it comes to casting their votes.

Inspired by a shaft of sunlight coming through the blasted window, the cardinals begin to vote for a seventh time. They reach a decision, but we won't reveal the verdict or the final twist that threatens to end the reign of Pope Innocent before it can begin.

Behind the Scenes

In Robert Harris's novel, the Dean of the College of Cardinals is Jacopo Baldassare Lomeli, the Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia. Berger and the producers realised that they would struggle to raise funding for the project with an Italian lead. So, the decision was taken to change the carmerlengo's nationality and Ralph Fiennes was approached to play Thomas Lawrence, a reserved and thoughtful British cardinal. 'As we continued to develop the script,' Berger explained, 'I realised this character is a quiet and reluctant character of these proceedings. He doesn't want to be the main guy. He doesn't have the most lines. We see him thinking and listening a lot.'

Having met Berger and Ross after they came to watch him perform on stage, Fiennes quickly accepted the role. 'I was brought up a Catholic,' he revealed, 'and then I rebelled when I was 13. My mother was a committed Catholic. On my mother's side, there are some theologians. So, God questions have been in my family since I was a child.' Aware of the budgetary constraints, Fiennes agreed to work for scale, as did John Lithgow and Stanley Tucci.

As the host of Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy (2022), the latter was often consulted about the best restaurants Rome, a place that was also familiar to Isabella Rossellini, who had grown up in the Eternal City as the daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, who had made several films together during their marriage, including Stromboli (1950), Journey to Italy, and Fear (both 1954). As Rossellini told one journalist, 'I went to Catholic schools and was taught by nuns, so I knew something about them. They have a great presence and great authority in silence. They were not submissive at all, although they weren't given the rights to talk or to vote for the pope or even officiate Mass.'

British Tanzanian actor Lucian Msamati was cast as Cardinal Adeyemi on the strength of his performances as J.L.B. Matekoni in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (2009), Salladhor Saan in Game of Thrones (2011-19), and Ed Dumani in Gangs of London (2020-). But Berger was keen to have a complete unknown play Cardinal Benitez. 'It didn't really matter where that person was from,' the director noted. 'I just wanted someone who...I would be able to look into his eyes and believe what he said. And that's not easy if you've seen them in 20 movies.' He was fortunate, therefore, when Carlos Diehz, who had just started acting after training to be an architect, turned up at an international casting call. Born in Mexico City, but based in Vancouver, he had become an actor after his children had left home. But he had only appeared in two shorts, The Vegan Vampire and It Gets Dark Too Early, when he landed the role of a lifetime.

Although it's difficult to ascertain how the cardinals reach their decisions during a conclave, it is possible to discover details of some of the rituals involved. Vatican assistance wasn't sought, but a religious adviser was retained to ensure accuracy in such instances as the breaking of the dead pope's fisherman's ring and the casting of votes using a silver platter and a large silver and gilded urn. As Fiennes disclosed, 'It was very important to me to get the rituals right, such as how you wear your hat. And there are different ways of holding your hands when praying.'

Known for films like Mike Leigh's Mr Turner (2014), for which she received an Oscar nomination, and Emerald Fennell's Saltburn (2023), production designer Suzie Davies also took a tour of the Vatican and was granted access to the gardens and the Casa Santa Marta. She was asked to make the latter as austere as possible, as though it was a relict of Italy's Fascist past, and an abandoned military canteen was refurbished for the purpose. The dormitory area, with its long corridors, however, had to be constructed at the studio. 'I wanted the corridors to feel as long as possible,' Davies explained, 'so it was our biggest build. To handle the logistics, we built it right along the Sistine Chapel on the same stage. If you went through some of the doors in the Casa Santa Marta, you'd end up in the Sistine Chapel. It was like a massive jigsaw puzzle in which I ended up using every available space on that sound stage.'

As these interiors were unfamiliar, Davies had a degree of latitude that was not possible with the Sistine Chapel. Fortunately, Conclave was not the first production seeking to reproduce Michelangelo Buonarroti's frescoes at Rome's Cinecittà Studios. Indeed, Davies found a set left behind by Paolo Sorrentino's The Young Pope (2016) and was able to renovate it. 'It was packed down into flats which were eight by four feet, and we built them back up,' she recalled. 'The painting crew was extraordinary, and we put the Sistine Chapel together again in 10 weeks.'

With the Vatican off limits, Davies and her location scouts had to be creative in finding suitably impressive interiors. The courtyards and corridors of the L'Ospedale di Santo Spirito came in handy, as did the golden room at the Museo Barberini in Rome, where Lawrence gives his pre-conclave homily. The Villa Medici also made an eye-catching stand-in, prompting Fiennes to opine, 'To the person who knows, this is not the Vatican. But I think for a film, you could believe this was an aspect of the Vatican.'

While a red carpet was placed in the Sistine mock-up rather than the beige one that is actually used, costume designer Lisy Christl also took liberties with the colour of the cardinal's robes. After visiting several museums and the liturgical vestment makers Gammarelli and the Tirelli Costumi stage costume repository, she decided that a hue used in the 17th century looked better on camera than the more scarlet variation currently in use.

The cast arrived in Rome in January 2023 and the shoot took around 40 days. As the Sistine sequences lasted for a fortnight, John Lithgow smuggled a sketch pad on to the set and hid it under the tablecloth covering his desk. He also asked to be seated next to local extras so he could practice his Italian between scenes. Berger wanted to avoid the exchanges between the cardinals seeming like something from a stage play. But Straughan recognised that there was something theatrical about the scenario. 'There's the actual stage where the rituals are being carried out, he said. 'And then there's backstage, where the horse trading is going on in the rooms and in the stairwells, and you see the cardinals take off their masks and you see who they really are.'

But there was also a cinematic influence on proceedings, with post-Watergate paranoia pictures like Alan J. Pakula's The Parallax View (1974) shaping Berger's approach. 'I wasn't drawn to the Vatican,' the director divulged. 'Our movie could have taken place in Washington, D.C., or in any boardroom somewhere.' Straughan partly concurred. 'It's the oldest election in the world,' he explained, 'and it's the most absolute, with a constituency of one and a half billion. But it's a mistake to think this stands for a secular election. Those in the conclave believe the Holy Ghost speaks through them.'

The element of doubt about the Catholic Church's ability to uphold the faith also proved a vital factor. This particularly impacted upon the way in which Fiennes viewed Cardinal Lawrence. 'What was Lawrence's interior life?' he asked himself. 'I felt he's a man sitting on quite a lot of frustration or inner sadness but also knows he's got to do his duty.' Some of his colleagues are driven by other forces, however. As Berger told the BBC, they fall victim to their ambitions. 'The CEO is gone,' he said, 'and people are going to come out fighting, they're going to take out their knives and get that job, in Washington D.C. or in the Church in this case. We think of this as an ancient spiritual ritual, and these men as sort of holy. We put them on this pedestal, and when you look closer, they're going to have cell phones, they're going to smoke, they have the same problems and vices and secrets as we do. The Pope ends up in a plastic body bag like all of us. And to me, that was important, to bring them into modernity.'

For all the authenticity, however, there was still room for poetic sequences like the one involving the cardinals milling about a courtyard beneath white umbrellas. This shot was inspired by the All Quiet notion of soldiers marching in unison towards their destiny and Berger wanted to show that the cardinals were also a band of brothers heading towards the inevitable.

Cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine described the technique involved. 'The camera was in a high window,' he remembered, 'looking down at the yard. We had quite a lot of rain, along with a bit of sun and a bit of good luck, so the lighting was just right. But we didn't have enough cardinals on the day.' So, the same group of extras was photographed in different positions and brought together during the editing process. 'We shot a few different plates,' Fontaine explained, 'and then stitched them together to make them look like that sea of cardinals that you see, all in forward movement together.'

Another scene that required special effects was the explosion in the Sistine Chapel. However, the stars and the extras did get covered in prop rubble after the window blew in. As Suzie Davies disclosed, a piston mechanism positioned some 70ft above the set floor showered the actors with dust and small pieces of rock. 'It was the cast and background artists who were underneath all that rubble. We had to be careful with the dust so people didn't inhale it. We did about four takes of that explosion. I had a brilliant props team who would come in and clean everything down, and we'd reset and go again. It was pretty quick because everyone was so prepped. It was military precision.'

With the shoot ending in March, German composer Volker Bertelmann started putting the finishing touches to what was his fifth score for Edward Berger. Having used a harmonium to achieve the unique sound on All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), Bertelmann employed a Cristal Baschet, a crystallophone that is played with wet hands, to create a sound that was atypically classical or ecclesiastical. The effect was both dramatic and atmospheric. Moreover, once heard, it's hard to get the three-string motif played by the Budapest Art Orchestra out of your head.

Billowing Smoke

Having premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on 30 August 2024, Conclave was released in the US on 25 October (just before the presidential election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris) and in the UK on 29 November. Reviews were positive in regard to the depiction of the election, although not everyone was convinced by the melodramatic nature of the manner in which the various candidates were eliminated or the sensationalism of the big reveal. Moreover, there was criticism of the decision to skirt the highly contentious issues currently facing the Vatican in the real world.

Catholic commentators pointed out that the roles of dean and camerlengo aren't usually entrusted to one man. They also questioned the ready acceptance of a cardinal in pectore and noted that 'Cardinals don't fall neatly into progressive and conservative camps...in general, it's much more of a mixed bag' - as the election of centre-ground moderate Leo XIV has aptly demonstrated.

Some even complained that nuns would not go snooping around the corridors of the Casa Santa Marta late at night. But director Alexander Payne was prepared to forgive such quibbles in naming Conclave among his films of the year. 'You just can't believe how riveting it is - funny and suspenseful and so well-cast and well-acted. Berger has the miraculous quality of making something you never forget is a movie, but at the same time, it's as though you're actually there.'

Made for just $20 million, Conclave has gone on to gross $118 million worldwide and has done a roaring trade since the death of Pope Francis. At the BAFTAs, it was nominated in 12 categories and achieved the rare feat of winning both Best British Film and Best Film. Straughan won for his adapted screenplay and repeated the trick at the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards, in winning the film's only Oscar from eight nominations. Ralph Fiennes and Isabella Rossellini were unlucky to miss out on the big awards, although the Screen Actors Guild rewarded the picture with the award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast.

This prize was presented while Pope Francis was in hospital in Rome. It's not known if he ever saw the film, but his death reportedly led to a 283% increase in streaming viewership. Now the world has its first North American pope - although 69 year-old Robert Prevost does have dual Peruvian citizenship - it is to be hoped that there won't be another conclave for a good while. One thing is for sure, however, whenever the cardinalate next gathers in Rome to elect a pope, the rituals depicted in Conclave will remain the same as they have done for centuries.