Roots and religion are very much on the mind of Martin Scorsese as the Oscar-winning director is being honored with a lifetime achievement award by the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily, where he has family roots.

Scorsese, 82, is back in Sicily after he last travelled to the Italian island in October 2024 to start shooting a doc that takes its cue from the recent discovery in Sicilian waters of the wreck of a large sunken ship called Marausa 2 dating to the third century A.D. On that occasion, he visited the town of Polizzi Generosa, home of his paternal grandparents, Teresa and Francesco Scorsese, before they immigrated to New York at the turn of the last century.