The Bankers of God: The Calvi Affair (Italian: I banchieri di Dio also known as The God's Bankers) is an Italian drama film directed in 2002 by Giuseppe Ferrara.
Contents
Plot
The film tells the story of the scandal of Banco Ambrosiano, mainly related to the figure of Roberto Calvi. The Clearstream scandal exploded as a case full of intricate affairs involving the financial world, the Vatican, the Masonic Lodge P2, the Italian Secret Service, the Secret Intelligence Service, the Italian politics, the Mafia and the Banda della Magliana.
The movie narrates in detail all these connections, trying to reconstruct events and plots. The film ends with the death of Calvi under the Blackfriars Bridge, in London, openly supporting the murder-hypothesis.
Cast
Omero Antonutti as Roberto Calvi
Giancarlo Giannini as Flavio Carboni
Alessandro Gassman as Francesco Pazienza
Rutger Hauer as Bishop Paul Marcinkus
Pamela Villoresi as Clara Calvi
Vincenzo Peluso as Silvano Vittor
Pier Paolo Capponi as Roberto Rosone
Franco Diogene as Luigi Mennini
Camillo Milli as Licio Gelli
Franco Olivero as Michele Sindona
Production
The film had a very long and troubled development. According to the director Giuseppe Ferrara, he started the project in 1986, soon after The Moro Affair, and wanted Gian Maria Volonté in the main role of Roberto Calvi. After a final rejection of the project in 1991 by producers Silvio Berlusconi and Vittorio Cecchi Gori, and with Ferrara's intention of throwing in the towel, the interest of Rai Cinema finally made the project possible 15 years later, in 2001.
The same year, the Italian book of the same name by Mario Almerighi was published.