Los Dos Papas -

Benedict’s response is the film’s theological heart. Instead of issuing a punishment, he forgives Bergoglio and then, shockingly, asks for forgiveness himself. The man who built his career defending doctrinal purity admits that he has been a poor shepherd because he could not connect with his flock. "I am a book, you are a street," Benedict says. In that admission, the film suggests that holiness is not about being right, but about being vulnerable. Los Dos Papas is deeply aware of the media age. The film intercuts its quiet conversations with the chaos of the 2005 and 2013 conclaves: the black smoke, the white smoke, the screaming crowds in St. Peter’s Square. Meirelles, the director of City of God , brings a kinetic, almost documentary energy to these sequences. The cardinals whisper in Latin while the world tweets. The clash is not just between two men, but between the medieval and the digital.

This levity is not disrespectful; it is radical. The film argues that the sacred is found in the profane. When Francis later sneaks out of the Vatican to minister to the homeless or when Benedict quietly slips away into retirement, the film celebrates the small, rebellious acts of humanity.

Pryce, by contrast, is all earthy motion. His Bergoglio shuffles, sighs, and dances the tango in his head. He is a pope who smells of sheep, who washes the feet of the poor, and who speaks of God not in Latin syllogisms but in the silence of a rainy Buenos Aires street. los dos papas

Bergoglio unburdens himself of his darkest memory—his failure during Argentina’s Dirty War, when he allegedly did not do enough to protect two imprisoned priests. The film handles this controversial chapter with nuance, suggesting that Bergoglio’s entire papacy is an act of penance for that silence. In this scene, Los Dos Papas transcends biopic territory. It becomes a meditation on whether the sins of the past can ever be redeemed by the actions of the present.

Benedict represents the pre-modern Church—beautiful, silent, certain. Francis represents the postmodern Church—messy, dialogical, uncertain. When Benedict argues that the Church must resist the "dictatorship of relativism," Francis counters that the Church must stop dictating and start listening. The film does not declare a winner. Instead, it suggests that both are necessary: the structure of Ratzinger preserves the space for the compassion of Bergoglio. What makes the film so watchable, however, is its joy. After the heavy theology, there is a sequence where the two popes abandon their protocol to watch Germany beat Argentina in the 2010 World Cup. They eat pizza on the floor. They argue about offside rules. They forget, for a moment, that they are the vicars of Christ. Benedict’s response is the film’s theological heart

Hopkins’ final performance as a retired pope—living in a cloistered garden, feeding chickens, and smiling without the weight of the world—is heartbreaking. He has found peace by relinquishing power. Pryce’s final shot, walking through the Vatican halls alone, realizing he is now the one who must doubt, is equally powerful. Los Dos Papas is a rare film: a religious movie for atheists, a historical drama that invents its history, and a comedy about the end of the world. It argues that faith is not the absence of doubt, but the courage to live within it. It suggests that the future of the Church—perhaps of any institution—depends not on warriors who never change their minds, but on leaders willing to admit they might be wrong.

Released on Netflix to critical acclaim, the film arrived at a moment when the real-world Catholic Church was fracturing between reactionary traditionalists and reformists. By focusing on the transition from Pope Benedict XVI to Pope Francis, Los Dos Papas does not just document a historical handover; it invents a spiritual thriller where the only weapons are guilt, confession, and the Sistine Chapel’s floor tiles. The film’s engine is its casting. Anthony Hopkins as Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) and Jonathan Pryce as Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) deliver masterclasses in internal conflict. Hopkins plays Benedict not as a villain, but as a lonely scholar. His Ratzinger is a man who loves the Church as an abstract, perfect architecture of doctrine. He is rigid, brilliant, and terrified of the mob. When he plays the piano in the papal summer residence, he looks less like a pontiff and more like a retired professor who has outlived his century. "I am a book, you are a street," Benedict says

In the annals of cinema, few films have dared to place two men in a room, set them at ideological odds, and emerge with something as fragile and revolutionary as hope. Fernando Meirelles’ Los Dos Papas (2019) is precisely that film. On its surface, it is a buddy dramedy set in the gilded cages of the Vatican. But beneath the Latin chanting and the white cassocks lies a searing, profoundly human argument about the nature of faith, the burden of tradition, and the terrifying necessity of change.

The film constructs a fictionalized private meeting in 2012 at Castel Gandolfo, where Bergoglio—having already attempted to resign as archbishop—is summoned by Benedict to discuss his departure. This meeting never happened in real life, but Meirelles and screenwriter Anthony McCarten use this dramatic license to stage a series of philosophical duels. The film’s most audacious scene occurs in the Sistine Chapel, beneath the gaze of Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment . Here, Bergoglio confesses his sins to the Pope. It is a stunning inversion of power: the future pope confessing to the current pope. But the scene is not about absolution; it is about revelation.

In a cynical age, Los Dos Papas offers an unfashionable virtue: hope. It reminds us that two old men, arguing about God in a garden, can be more thrilling than any superhero. And that sometimes, the most revolutionary act is to listen.