Flavia the Heretic
Flavia the Heretic is a 1974 film from France and Italy, directed by Gianfranco Mingozzi, running 100 minutes. reelscum files it under nunsploitation.
- Year
- 1974 · 1970s films
- Runtime
- 100 min
- Director
- Gianfranco Mingozzi
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (39/100)
- Also known as
- Flavia · The Rebel Nun
Defined in the glossary: Nunsploitation
Far angrier and more political than the packaging suggests.
Marketed as standard convent sleaze and considerably angrier and more political than it needed to be. A noblewoman forced into a convent in medieval Italy rebels against the men and the Church controlling her, eventually joining an invading Muslim army against them, and the violence builds to a harrowing finale.
Gianfranco Mingozzi makes real arguments about faith, patriarchy and female autonomy under the exploitation surface, and the film does not flinch from where its rage leads. It is grim, beautiful and much smarter than the genre average.
The nunsploitation film with the most on its mind, and the strongest stomach required.
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On these lists
- Nunsploitation ranked by blasphemy
Ranked from the merely sacrilegious up to Ken Russell torching a cathedral. The habit comes off in reel one either way.
Filed alongside
Alucarda
The most hysterical nunsploitation film ever made. A convent, two possessed girls, and constant screaming.
Killer Nun
Anita Ekberg, morphine, and a plot that gives up around the hour mark.
Successive Slidings of Pleasure
A nouveau-roman novelist makes a nunsploitation film and refuses to let it mean anything.
Images in a Convent
D'Amato's convent, where the theology is a coat-hook for the softcore.
Behind Convent Walls
Borowczyk brings his erotic art-house eye to the convent. Beautiful, explicit and barely plotted.
School of the Holy Beast
The Japanese entry, and formally the most accomplished of them.
The Nun and the Devil
Convent politics played as Renaissance power-drama. More Borgia than bondage.
The Devils
A great film about power, finally restored after fifty-five years.