Benedetta is a new biographical drama directed and partly written by Paul Verhoeven, the director of Zwartboek and RoboCop.

The film is set at the end of the seventeenth century, where Benedetta Carlini (Virginia Efira) has been living in the monastery of Pescia from a young age. Here she says she sees religious visions that after some doubt are believed by the rest of the nuns. In this way she gains more influence in the monastery and tries to help against the plague that is spreading in the country. Benedetta does hide that in addition to her religious visions, she also sees erotic visions. She only shares this with the girl Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia), whom she has helped into the monastery, and together they try to explain these visions without the rest of the monastery being allowed to know.

Paul Verhoeven is known for not playing it safe as a director and just putting forward in his films what he thinks is necessary. This film has already received a lot of criticism from religious angles, but Verhoeven uses as a counter argument that he based the film on true facts from history. These facts are largely only from two people, so the credibility of their story can be questioned.

For atheistic people, due to certain elements that happen, this film can come across more like a fantasy film, which only responds to the history of the faith and how this was sometimes used as an abuse of power.