God's Bankers AKA The Bankers of God: The Calvi Affair

[Don Rizzle]

Ever since reading about this film a few months ago i've been desperate to see it, however from what i can tell its never beem released to dvd and theres no rip on the net     anyone know anything about where i may be able to find it?


The Times (London)

March 28, 2002, Thursday

Judge bans film linking Italian to London 'suicide'

Richard Owen in Rome

A JUDGE in Rome ordered that a controversial film about the mysterious death
of a Vatican-linked banker be withdrawn from cinemas across Italy yesterday
after a complaint by a businessman with alleged Mafia links that it damages his
reputation and honour.

The film, I Banchieri di Dio (God's Bankers), which opened on March 8 and
has been playing to packed houses, deals with the death of Roberto Calvi, the
head of the Banco Ambrosiano, who was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge, in
1982 with his pockets weighed down with stones.

The film, directed by Giuseppe Ferrara, stars Omero Antonutti as Calvi and
Rutger Hauer as Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican Bank, known
as the Institute for Religious Works, which was closely linked to the Banco
Ambrosiano. Calvi was found dead after he resigned as head of the bank, which
crashed with huge debts in a murky financial scandal. In 1997 arrest warrants
were issued for a number of alleged mafiosi and Mafia-linked figures, including
Flavio Carboni, a businessman police said was "intimately involved" in the
scandal.

Signor Carboni, played in the film by Giancarlo Giannini, who starred with
Sir Anthony Hopkins in Hannibal, has not yet been brought to trial.

The judge, Marzia Cruciani, said that she agreed with Signor Carboni that
the film attributed to him a central role in Calvi's "tragic demise". She said
that she had ordered Signor Carboni to lodge 1.5 million (Pounds 920,000) with
the court while the film was taken off the screens.

The judge explained that if it was eventually shown that Signor Carboni did
play such a central role in the Calvi affair and was convicted, the money
deposited would be used to compensate the film-makers. Magistrates said that the
trial had not taken place because investigators were still seeking evidence on
the death of Calvi, whose body has been exhumed for forensic tests.

I Banchieri di Dio is based partly on a series of judicial inquiries into
the Calvi affair over the past 20 years and partly on the testimony of Calvi's
son Carlo, who now lives in Montreal.

Carlo Calvi maintains that his father did not commit suicide, as a London
coroner concluded at the time, but was murdered by the Mafia, partly because he
owed them "huge sums of money" but also because he knew too much about alleged
links between Mafia-connected financiers and the Vatican.

Signor Ferrara protested that Italy was "a country of censorship...this
ruling is strangling freedom of expression". He added: "I am ashamed to be an
Italian citizen. I did not realise things had got so bad here". The director
said that he had worked on the film for 15 years and had taken "enormous pains
to get the details right".

The film, half documentary and half drama, maintains that Signor Carboni was
instrumental in luring Calvi to London but does not suggest that he committed
the murder or had any direct part in it. "I paint him as an ambiguous
character," Signor Ferrara said. He said that he was being punished for drawing
attention to "the links between the business world, the Mafia, secret masonic
lodges and the secret services".

The film has also caused offence in the Vatican, partly because it portrays
the Pope, always shown from behind, as directly involved in seamy financial
dealings and also because Archbishop Marcinkus is shown as a cynical and
foul-mouthed, manipulative figure.

Enzo Gallo, the film's producer, said that he would appeal against the
ruling. The financial damage would be enormous, he said. The film had taken
Pounds 250,000 in the three weeks since its release.