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Aspen, CO (November 14, 2019): Aspen Film and the Wheeler Opera House will co-present a screening of the Netflix original film THE TWO POPES on Thursday, December 12 at 6:30 p.m. at the Wheeler Opera House. The 2019 biographical drama premiered in August at the Telluride Film Festival and will be out in limited theatrical release in late December. Tickets are $20 and $15 for Aspen Film and Wheeler Wins members and will go on sale Tuesday, November 19 at the Wheeler Opera House Box Office (970.920.5770/ aspenshowtix.com) located at 320 E. Hyman Ave., Aspen, CO.

“We are absolutely thrilled to be presenting this delightful, insightful and creatively historic story of a hypothetical conversation between two very different men – one very traditional and the other quite progressive – which is inspired by true events debating the Church’s role in recent decades,” says Aspen Film’s Executive + Artistic Director, Susan Wrubel. “Director Fernando Meirelles is one of the fantastic visual storytellers of our time, and his direction of Anthony McCarten’s incredible script is a thoughtful and entertaining masterpiece which embraces a broader, secular audience.”

The Two Popes is a fascinating and revealing tale of an unprecedented transfer of power, inspired by true events, in one of the world’s most important but private institutions, the Catholic Church. An exploration of the pressures and responsibilities of power, the moral struggles of leadership, and how one man’s legacy might be changed by his chosen successor, The Two Popes follows the imagined conversations between two very different men — one a traditionalist, the other a progressive — about the role of the Church in a changing world.

Director Fernando Meirelles (Blindness, City of God, The Constant Gardener) brings together two acting titans, Academy Award-winner Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict (the German John Ratzinger) and two-time Emmy nominee Jonathan Pryce as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (later Pope Francis), with Juan Minujín (El Marginal, Focus, Epitafios), as the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Shot entirely on location in Argentina and Rome, the screenplay is written by Academy Award nominee Anthony McCarten (The Theory of Everything, Darkest Hour).