''The Devil and Father Amorth'' is a 2017 American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

directed by

William Friedkin William "Billy" Friedkin (born August 29, 1935)Biskind, p. 200. is an American film and television director, producer and screenwriter closely identified with the " New Hollywood" movement of the 1970s. Beginning his career in documentaries in ...

showing the ninth

exorcism Exorcism () is the religious or spiritual practice of evicting demons, jinns, or other malevolent spiritual entities from a person, or an area, that is believed to be possessed. Depending on the spiritual beliefs of the exorcist, this may be ...

of an Italian woman in the village of

Alatri Alatri ( la, Aletrium) is an Italian town and ''comune'' of the province of Frosinone in the region of Lazio, with c. 30,000 inhabitants. An ancient city of the Hernici,Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Hernici". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed. ...

referred to as "Cristina", this time performed by Father Gabriele Amorth.

Cast

* Gabriele Amorth *

Robert Barron Robert Emmet Barron (born November 19, 1959) is an American prelate of the Catholic Church who has served as bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester since 2022. He is the founder of the Catholic ministerial organization Word on Fire, and ...

Production

Mark Kermode, a British film critic and long-time admirer of Friedkin, was invited to assist in writing narration.

Release

The film premiered at the

74th Venice International Film Festival The 74th annual Venice International Film Festival was held from 30 August to 9 September 2017. The jury president was announced as the actress Annette Bening on 5 July 2017. '' Downsizing'', directed by Alexander Payne, was selected to open ...

on August 31, 2017. It had a wide release in the United States on April 20, 2018.

Reception

On review aggregator website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 44% based on 39 reviews, with an average rating of 4.88/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "''The Devil and Father Amorth'' sets out to interrogate age-old questions of faith, but fails to find enough compelling answers -- or reasons for viewers to watch." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 46 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Robbie Collin of ''

The Telegraph ''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include: Australia * ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...

'' wrote that the film "feels amateurish and arguably also exploitative ..although perhaps that lends it credibility: in this context, too much polish would almost certainly be cause for suspicion." Owen Gleiberman of ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'' called the film "a rather tawdry charade."

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Devil and Father Amorth, The 2017 films 2017 documentary films American documentary films Demons in film Films about Catholic priests Films directed by William Friedkin Films shot in Molise Films about exorcism LD Entertainment films The Orchard (company) films Religious horror films 2010s English-language films 2010s American films