Conclave by Edward Berger: Inside the Scenography of the Sacred
- Bianca Agnelli
- May 6
- 3 min read
The Pope died on the morning of April 21st, 2025.
That day I got up around 9 a.m., with a lingering feeling I couldn’t quite shake. As if something was out of place.
Every morning, I switch on the news as I make coffee. That morning, in large red letters across the screen, I read: “Pope Francis has died.”
And I felt a pang in my chest - despite my faith being more uncertain than ever, despite the Church always stirring up conflicting emotions in me.
The death of a Pope… should it affect me?
Well, if you’re Italian and you live in Italy, yes. And it’s not just a matter of faith.
It’s cultural, symbolic, almost visceral. It’s something that passes through you.
My country was in mourning - and somehow, so was I.
But as I listened to the muffled voices of Vatican commentators, my ears began to ring. I could hear Volker Bertelmann’s violins. I saw the red robes of cardinals rustling nervously through the Vatican halls. I heard whispers. I watched glances.
Cinema has that power: it lingers on you. It prepares you, at times, for the unthinkable.
And Conclave, directed by Edward Berger and released in 2024, had left a trace on me almost as vivid as a taste on the tongue.
An adaptation of the eponymous novel by British author Robert Harris, Conclave won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2025.
It premiered in Italian cinemas in mid-December - just when concerns over the Pope’s health began to surface. A coincidence? Perhaps. But the timing made the film feel almost prophetic.
The cast features Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto, and Isabella Rossellini.
Each plays an enigmatic, symbolic, powerful figure - each embodying a different vision of the Church: progressives, conservatives, moderates.
The conclave is a ritual, but also a dance. And most of all: a war.
Strategy is everything. Secrecy is its backbone.
Cardinal Dean Thomas Lawrence, played by Fiennes, guides the story through a crescendo of tension and ambiguity.
Shot between Cinecittà, Rome, and Italian locations such as the Royal Palace of Caserta and the Palazzo dei Congressi in the EUR district, Conclave captures the suspended, hieratic atmosphere of the Vatican.
Stéphane Fontaine’s lighting draws shadows that seem to watch you. Suzie Davis’s set design wraps around the film like a second skin - silent, enveloping.
And then there’s the music. Volker Bertelmann composed a score that breathes with the characters.
A prepared piano, dissonant notes, ancient echoes: the sound of enclosure and doubt.
This is not just a film about a papal election. It’s about power - its shapes, its compromises, its hypocrisies.
It’s also about faith - the kind that remains, and the kind that slips away.
And it tells its story without declarations, through Berger’s gaze - at once cold and human - the same that marked All Quiet on the Western Front.
On a day when history unfolded in real time, Conclave became, at least for me, both a visual and internal echo. A film that not only anticipated the headlines but also revealed who we really are - when power calls, and truth grows murky.
Starting Wednesday, the area around St. Peter’s will be sealed. Rome will draw close to the Vatican with the suspended stillness of a snowy day. Entry points will be closed, and the faithful will wait in hushed anticipation.
133 cardinals will enter the Sistine Chapel to elect the new pope. Men from 71 countries, with faith in their pockets and, perhaps, doubt in their eyes.
And all of us, outside, eyes fixed on the chimney. Waiting for the smoke.
Waiting for history to unfold before our very eyes.
I often wonder how much cinema there is in reality - and how much reality there is in certain films.
Conclave taught me that the rooms of power are full of silence, strategy, and symbols.
That mystery is not just a narrative device, but a deeply human mechanism.
And now that mystery is here, among us.
In the heart of Rome, beneath Michelangelo’s frescoes, in a breath held by the entire world.
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Bianca curates and writes for The Olive Press, a space for reflections on cinema, culture, and landscape born within Il Giardino di Cristina.
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