The Conclave

In 1458, five years after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, eighteen cardinals gather to elect a new pope. Across three days behind closed doors the lobbying, the promises and the veiled threats follow one another, and the man through whose eyes we watch is Rodrigo Borgia, a cardinal of twenty seven who is only beginning to learn a very dangerous game. That same Borgia would become pope himself years later as Alexander VI. Christoph Schrewe’s hundred minute Canadian German co-production is built on the records left by Cardinal Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who sat through the conclave and emerged from it as Pope Pius II. Brian Blessed plays Piccolomini and Manu Fullola plays Borgia, with James Faulkner and Rolf Kanies also in the cast; it premiered at the Hamburg Film Festival on 7 September 2006.