Marco Bellocchio (Italian: [ˈmarko belˈlɔkkjo]; born 9 November 1939; Bobbio) is an Italian film director, screenwriter, and actor.

Born in Bobbio, near Piacenza, Marco Bellocchio received a strict Catholic upbringing — his father was a lawyer, his mother a schoolteacher. He began studying philosophy in Milan, but then decided to enroll in film school, having made his first film, Fists in the Pocket (I pugni in tasca, winner of the Silver Sail at the 1965 Locarno Film Festival), financed by family members and shot on family property, in 1965.

Bellocchio's films include China Is Near (1967), Slap the Monster on Page One (Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina) (1972), In the Name of the Father (Nel Nome del Padre — a satire on Catholic boarding school with similarities to Lindsay Anderson's If....) (1972), Victory March (1976), Leap into the Void (1980), Henry IV (1984), Devil in the Flesh (1986), and My Mother's Smile (2002), which told the story of a wealthy Italian artist, "a Marxist by default and an atheist," who suddenly discovers that the Vatican is proposing to make his hated mother a saint. In 1991 he received the Silver Bear — the Grand Jury Prize at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival for the film The Conviction. In 1995 he made a documentary about the Red Brigades and the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro titled Broken Dreams. In 2003 he made a feature film on the same subject, Good Morning, Night. In 2006 his film The Wedding Director was shown in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. In 1999 he was awarded an Honorable Prize for contribution to cinema at the 21st Moscow International Film Festival. In 2009 he made the film Vincere, which was in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival. He completed Sorelle Mai, an experimental film that was shot over ten years with students from six separate workshops playing themselves. He was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in September 2011. His 2012 film Sleeping Beauty was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 69th Venice International Film Festival.[6] On 6 September 2012, Bellocchio condemned the Catholic Church's interference in politics after the premiere of his controversial film about a high-profile euthanasia case. The film addresses euthanasia and the difficulties with end-of-life legislation in Italy, within whose borders the Vatican lies. The plot was inspired by the Eluana Englaro case. After the decision of the Venice Film Festival jury, which excluded the film from competition for the Golden Lion, Bellocchio expressed sharp criticism of president Michael Mann.