The Venice Film Festival announced on Thursday that Shia LaBeouf’s new biopic, “Padre Pio” will be amongst the films premiering during this year’s Venice Days. According to an Italian interview with the film’s director, Abel Ferrara, the film follows the youth of the Catholic saint and Capuchin friar and “is not a biography but rather a parallel journey between two worlds, that of Pio locked up in a convent, fighting against the temptations of spirit and flesh, and that of workers ‘and peasants’ movements, committed against the landowners in the years preceding fascism.” Born Francisco Forgione in 1887, Padre Pio is most famous for experiencing a “stigmata.” Catholic Education describes the stigmata as “the spontaneous appearance of the wound marks of our crucified Lord on a person’s body.” After experiencing the event several times and having performed several miracles, Pio was beatified in 1999 by Pope St. John II and canonized in 2022.

Ferrara stated he had hoped to cast LaBeouf due to his “restless spirit” and recent conversion to Christianity. The director noted that LaBeouf “took a dip in the dark” and had gone to live in a monastery for months to prepare for the role. LaBeouf has had a series of public breakdowns and arrests since his “Even Stevens” and “Transformers” days. The star fell into addiction and accusations of plagiarism for a short film he claimed to have written but appeared to have plagiarized from a 2007 comic “Justin M. Damiano.” A series of arrests and disorderly conduct followed, including, most famously, in 2014 when LaBeouf appeared at the red carpet premier of his new film “Nymphomaniac: Volume I” with a paper bag over his head and the words “I am not famous anymore” scrawled across it. His critically acclaimed 2019 autobiographical film “Honey Boy,” appeared to put his troubles behind him but in 2020 he was fired from a project for his behavior and was then accused of abuse by his former girlfriend. He checked into rehab in February 2021.

With the casting of his role in “Padre Pio,” a more pensive LaBeouf appeared in a brief Instagram post in the summer of 2021. In the video, he described his time on a pilgrimage with Franciscan friars to San Giovanni Rotondo, where Pio lived from 1916 until he died in 1968. The star noted that he had been met with “nothing but grace” and he was “immersed in something way bigger than myself.” The pilgrimage went as far as Rome, with a stop at Padre Pio Pilgrimage Church where Pio’s partially incorrupt remains are housed. Friar Hai Ho, one of the fellow travelers, commented on his Instagram, “We continue to [pray] for them, for those involved in the movie, and for continual graces…” It can be hoped that the experience will be good for LeBeouf’s soul who appears, like actor Andrew Garfield, to have been touched by his roles as a person of faith. As LeBeouf said in his video, “It’s super attractive to see people give themselves to something so divine.”