Martin Scorsese said he was removed from a Catholic seminary as a teenager “because I behaved badly,” a recollection featured in a new five-part documentary that premiered this weekend at the New York Film Festival and begins streaming on Apple TV+ on October 17. In the series, he describes early fascination with the priesthood and a brief stint at a preparatory seminary before administrators told his father to take him home; a childhood friend suggests romantic distractions may have played a part.
The account arrives as the director again places faith at the center of public conversation. The documentary, directed by Rebecca Miller, assembles extensive interviews with Scorsese and close collaborators to trace how Catholic imagery and questions of sin, grace, and vocation have threaded through his work for decades. The festival listing notes a portrait told “through Scorsese’s own words,” while Apple confirms the release date and format.
Scorsese has spoken before about his short-lived seminary experience, saying the decision to leave was not entirely his and acknowledging that he “behaved very badly” at the time. The new series situates those years within a longer biography that includes his Queens upbringing, early films, and the religiously charged projects that later sparked debate, from “The Last Temptation of Christ” to “Silence.”
The film also lands in a period of renewed engagement with the Church. Earlier this year, Scorsese announced a separate documentary centered on Pope Francis’s final extensive on-camera interview, underscoring his ongoing interest in how belief and art meet. Together, the projects reinforce a theme that has marked his career: the tension between spiritual aspiration and human frailty, rendered through stories that treat faith as lived experience rather than abstract doctrine.
