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Martin Scorsese<\/strong> does not mince words when asked how he feels about Donald Trump<\/strong>. \u201cA disappointment,\u201d he says. The director himself cares about compassion, \u201cand what’s important in life between human beings. I don’t find this administration under Trump to have any of that. In fact, they relish in the opposite\u2014to hurt people. And this is sad. Tragic. They say they aren’t, but they do.\u201d<\/p>\n Scorsese returned\u2014as he prefers to say\u2014to Sicily this week to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Taormina Film Festival. (Scorsese\u2019s grandparents are all from Sicily; they emigrated to New York in the early 20th century.) He participated in masterclass with film students, the red carpet with daughter Francesca, the awards ceremony, and then a screening of one of his most iconic films, Taxi Driver<\/em>, in the middle of the night at the Teatro Antico.<\/p>\n In Taormina, Scorsese talked about his roots, vocation, and religion, as well as democracy in peril in a divided America. “My father was from Polizzi Generosa, my mother from Ciminna,” he told the students,.”For me to be here is not a visit\u2014it’s a return. I learned so much from my family.” And again, \u201cI grew up in New York immersed in Sicilian culture, in a very tough environment. Two opposite worlds coexisted around me: on the one hand, faith, compassion; on the other, organized crime. And perhaps therein lies the origin of everything I tell in my films: faith and gangsters.\u201d<\/p>\n Scorsese\u2019s new projects all have to do with religion. He\u2019s making a new film about Jesus, a series on the lives of the saints, and a documentary on the late Pope Francis. Scorsese smiles often, even when he\u2019s arguing.<\/p>\n \u201cI’m still working on an approach to the story on Jesus in the contemporary work,\u201d he tells a small group of Italian journalists. \u201cAnd I think it’ll take me into next year before I have the proper approach.<\/p>\n \u201cThis goes back to the early \u201860s, where I wanted to make a film based on the gospels in the lower east side of New York\u2014in the tenements and the slums where I grew up. I had it planned out, and I was beginning to be involved with some kind of filmmaking based in NYU\u2014which are very small at the time, only 30 students. Now there’s thousands. We were going to do it in black and white, of course. And then I saw The Gospel According to St. Matthew<\/em><\/a>. And I had to find another way.\u201d<\/p>\n Scorsese met Pope Francis several times, he says, and is currently finishing his film nabout the pontif: Aldeas\u2014A New Story.<\/em> Naturally, the project was shot partially in Sicily\u2014but also in Gambia, the Amazon rainforest, and other places. \u201cIt’s really about storytelling,\u201d says Scorsese, \u201cgetting to be acquainted with other cultures, other ways of thinking and learning about people, learning about each other.\u201d He was inspired in part by the Netflix miniseries Stories of a Generation – With Pope Francis<\/em>, released in 2021, a project in which Scorsese also participated. \u201cIt was about advice from the elderly. I was one of the elderly.\u201d<\/p>\n