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Religion has had been foundational in shaping Italy. Home to the Vatican State, the Italian peninsula is the religious centre for one billion Catholics globally. It is also increasingly home to those of other faiths, especially Islam. Italy´s development as a contemporary post-secular and multi-religious society is fraught and fascinating.

The recent resurgence of religious discourse is a sign of what German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, has defined as the post-secular condition. Habermas and others have questioned what most people in the West had, up to a few years ago, taken for granted: the unstoppable forward march of secularization and the subsequent marginalization of religion. Instead, one of the greatest global fault-lines in the contemporary world - the divide between absolutist, extremist Islamic faith and liberal, but Christian-inflected, secular values - has religious identity at its core. The first book-length study to examine religion in contemporary Italian cinema and television, Screening Religions in Italy spans genres such as horror, comedy, hagiopics, and TV fiction, and explores both commercial and art-house filmmaking. In a discussion of films and television series that range from Moretti´s Habemus Papam to Sorrentino´s The Young Pope, the author identifies two key issues: how Italian filmmaking constructs the continuing position of religion in the public sphere and why religion persists on Italian screens.



Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Italy, Secularization, and the Post-Secular

1. The Space for Religious Filmmaking: Policy and Infrastructures
2. The Persistence of Religion Onscreen: Icons, Rituals, and the Arts
3. Countercultural Catholic Values in the Public Sphere
4. Protest in the Public Sphere: The Shifting Line between Religious and Secular Space
5. Voicing the Religious Other: Assimilation, Horror, Resolution

Conclusion: Seeing is Believing: Italian Filmmaking Looks Post-Secularism in the Eye

References
Filmography
Index