Magnificat

In the Middle Ages a travelling executioner takes on an apprentice to teach him the finer points of torture and execution. At the same time a young girl is given by her parents to a Catholic convent. The film runs these two paths side by side and implies that both belong to the same order: one lays hands on the body, the other on a life. The account does not use the period as picturesque decoration; it shows the daily working of things, violence become ordinary, and the institutional face of faith. Most of the scenes are set within the course of a single day. Luigi Diberti plays the lead in Pupi Avati’s hundred and ten minute Italian film, completed in 1993.