Abel Ferrara Talks Shia LaBeouf Playing A ‘Padre Pio’ Saint, Sobriety, & Working On A New Ukraine War Doc [Venice Interview]

Did his films suffer?

“The films are community. You are working as part of my community,” he says. “So my energy is just a small part of it. Was I cool to be around? No. Because all I cared about was scoring drugs and getting high. But I’m still making movies. I have that gift. That doesn’t change. I’m just a better human being to be around.”

Playing in the Giornate Degli Autori, aka Venice Days, the festival’s version of the Director’s Fortnight section, the film is set at the end of World War I when Italian soldiers are returning to San Giovanni Rotondo, an impoverished town ruled by the church and wealthy landowners. Padre Pio arrives at a remote Capuchin monastery to begin his ministry just as Italy’s first free elections and a massacre begin.

Ferrara says he’s read every review of his film, which was seven years in the making. One reviewer in The Guardian suggested LaBeouf only plays a cameo in the movie, but Ferrara disagrees.

“It’s bullshit,” he says. “He’s in the whole movie. He’s in it when he’s not in it. First of all, he’s in a lot of scenes, and his power pervades the film like Pio’s pervades the town where the story takes place. The film is a documentary. This historical event happened. He’s not going to come in riding a white horse at the end.”

Others criticized his decision to leave out some of the controversy surrounding Pio, involving alleged affairs with women and money.

“It was all after the movie. And I don’t buy it. This movie ends on his stigmata. That’s all Padre Pio 2. Padre Pio 3. Padre Pio 4. But I don’t need to have a position on it because it’s not in the movie, but my position is it’s fucking bullshit. The guy built that fucking hospital. Talk about that,” says Ferrara.

He reflects a bit on Pio, the cat.

“A cat like that. Each one of those things is a movie. Him fucking chicks. Him fucking with the stigmata. Him taking that money. These are other movies, man,” he says.

“Our movie ends with that moment of communion with Christ and sacrifice and expression for what is the resolve here. What’s the resolve in Ukraine, people murdering each other with the US and your country giving them billions of dollars of weapons? That will help. What’s the answer? He’s coming up with an answer. The stigmata and sacrifice of Christ is the answer. That’s the spirituality.”

He adds: “The history of Italy is all about spirituality. You are either on the left side or the right side. You are either murdering people or helping people. You’ve got two choices.”

Ferrara previously made a documentary on Pio in 2015 called Searching for Padre Pio. But he’s not thinking of sequels about the saint’s alleged love life.

He’s working instead on a Ukraine War documentary with his Pio co-writer and collaborator Maurizio Braucci.

“We are shooting a documentary in Kiev. We just came back,” he says. “What is it? It’s World War Three. That’s what it is. We went there to see what’s going on. Boots on the ground. Four days.”

Does it have a title yet, I ask?

“You don’t need a fucking name. It’s World War III,” he says. “You know what I mean. You need a fucking name for that? I’m a documentary filmmaker. I’m a filmmaker. I’ve got friends that are Russian and friends that are Ukrainian. I want to know what’s going on, and I’ve got the wherewithal to do it. It’s going to be a long fucking movie. Let’s hope it doesn’t end like the last one with a neutron bomb going off. The last war ended with a nuclear holocaust in Japan.”

We wrap it up by chatting for a moment about his music. Ferrara played the night before at the fest with his music buddies, including Blues singer Joe Delia. I’m bummed to have missed it.

He shows me on his phone, him singing in a slick grey suit, and we walk through the tennis club, him singing the blues and me humming along. I snap a quick selfie with Ferrara before I go, but this time there’s no swearing, just song.