The remarkable story of the USA’s first saint, Francesca Cabrini, is told in a new feature film, being previewed in the UK this week (8 March 2024) for International Women’s Day and Mothering Sunday.

This powerful epic movie comes from Alejandro Monteverde, award-winning director of 𝘚𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘍𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘰𝘮, following Francesca Cabrini, an Italian immigrant who arrives in New York City in 1889 and is greeted by disease, crime, and impoverished children.

Played by Italian TV star Cristiana Dell’Anna, Cabrini embarks on a daring mission to convince the hostile mayor (Oscar nominee John Lithgow) to secure housing and healthcare for society’s most vulnerable.

With broken English and poor health, Cabrini uses her entrepreneurial spirit, faith, and determination to build an empire of hope unlike anything the world had ever seen.

Over the course of 34 years she established 67 hospitals, orphanages, and schools.

Francesca Cabrini arrived in New York in 1889 and became a US citizen 20 years later in 1909. She died in Chicago in 1917 at the age of 67 and was canonized in 1946 by Pope Pius XII, becoming the first US citizen to be named a saint.

Director Alejandro Monteverde said: “I wanted to make Cabrini because it’s an underdog story on a truly epic scale – the story of one woman defying impossible odds in a world dominated by men.

“Cabrini came to America with nothing – a woman at a time when women had no voice, an Italian at a time when Italians were considered the lowest of the low – and went on to build one of the greatest business empires the world had ever known.  She was the equal of Rockefeller, but with a difference: Cabrini’s empire benefited only the forgotten and the outcast.

“This film explores the power of a woman’s voice to overcome anything – from the most dangerous pimp in Five Points to the highest politician in New York.  Cabrini absolutely never, ever backed down. But Cabrini was also a nun – and I knew that my first challenge was to break the built-in prejudice against a hero who wears a habit. 

“To do this, I conceived of Cabrini as a cinematic dance, an elevated, almost operatic experience that mirrors the epic power and audacity of the woman herself. Like Cabrini, I am an immigrant – and the film draws upon my deepest feelings about the immigrant experience.  It is a truly epic story and I believe we have made an epic experience to match it – a film in the mold of Gandhi or Schindler’s List.”

Cabrini really looks like a must-see. You can watch the trailer here, and the film will be on theatrical release in the UK and Ireland from 15 March.

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