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His first film, Fists in the Pocket (1965), was funded by family members and shot on family property.

His feature debut, Fists in the Pocket (1965), was called "one of the most astonishing directorial debuts in the history of movies" by Pauline Kael.

Member of the Maoist group Unione dei Comunisti Italiani Marxisti-Leninisti (known as "Servire il Popolo") until 1969. The group also produced a few documentary movies of his.

Tribute at the Thessaloniki Film Festival (2002)

Retrospective at the Locarno International Film Festival. (1998)

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 84-88. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Has supported Lionel Jospin's 2002 French presidential campaign.

Member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1999.

Recepient of the Sergei Parajanov Award at Yerevan Film Festival (2006).

Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007.

Supporter of the Italian Radical Party (Radicali Italiani).

Former student at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Rome) and the London Slade School of Fine Arts.

Father of Elena Bellocchio and Pier Giorgio Bellocchio.

Brother of Letizia Bellocchio, Maria Luisa Bellocchio, Alberto Bellocchio and Piergiorgio Bellocchio.

Depicted as "one of the cinema's great poets of rebellion and escape - from family, from the Italian bourgeoisie and from the conformism and hypocrisy they represent" in a profile by New York Times in 2014.

Was awarded with an Honorable Prize for the contribution to cinema at the 21st Moscow International Film Festival in 1999.

Began studying philosophy in Milan but then decided to enter film school, first at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, then at the Slade School of Fine Art in London.

Described as "The Moral Anarchist" by Harvard Film Archive in the 2014 retrospective of his career.

Was awarded with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in September 2011.

Was a friend of fellow filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Was a candidate for Italian Parliament in 2006, with Rose in the Fist list, a political cartel made by socialists and Italian Radicals (a liberal, social liberal and libertarian party).

Pier Paolo Pasolini famously remarked that, in contrast to Bernardo Bertolucci's "cinema of poetry," Bellocchio's films represent a "cinema of prose" in which the style-the camera work and editing-is not foregrounded.