Vatican mystery “Conclave” opened in theaters today, but a single film has been the subject of moviegoers all season on the film festival circuit. Late in the film, we see dozens of Catholic cardinals, all dressed in white and red, filmed from above and from a distance, marching forward in the rain. Their faces are obscured by sharp white umbrellas, which bob along in the frame.

No plot spoilers here, except to say that the shot is emblematic of the high drama and arch formality of the film, which is crucial to understanding the story. Based on a novel by Robert Harris (“The Ghost Writer”), the film is about a tired cardinal (Ralph Fiennes) who organizes the election of a new pope. It marks the follow-up project for director Edward Berger, an Oscar winner for 2022’s “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

And according to the cinematographer of “Conclave,” this particular image shares DNA with Berger’s acclaimed World War I film. Stéphane Fontaine, whose credits include Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle” and Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet,” spoke to TheWrap about Berger’s sense of “visual geometry.”

“It was something Edward talked about in our first conversation,” Fontaine said. “‘All Quiet’ hadn’t even come out yet, but that’s something you can tell from that movie, which is a sense of the unstoppable. Moving forward in physical space and a sense that there’s no way you can flee. It was absolutely perfect for ‘All Quiet,’ in terms of the visual language of war.”

For “Conclave”, Fontaine explained that Berger was “quite keen that there should be a lot of wide shots in the film and that a lot of the shots should be very definite.”

This image of the cardinals under umbrellas represents the most iconic statement of this “broad and determined” idea. Fontaine nodded when I asked if he had felt a sense of the shot lingering in the audience’s mind.

But that was not easy to achieve, according to Fontaine. The location was a French property in Rome called Villa Medici, home of the French Academy’s artists-in-residencelocated in the larger Borghese Gardens.

The French cinematographer appreciated the choice of location. “I can almost say we filmed it in France,” he said with a laugh.

“The camera was in a high window and looked down on the yard. We had quite a bit of rain, along with some sun and some luck, so the lighting was just right. But we didn’t have enough cardinals on the day.”

So smaller sets of cardinals were multiplied in post-production for the final shot. “We shot a few different plates and then stitched them together to make them look like the sea of ​​cardinals that you see, all moving forward together.”

Asked about other images from “Conclave” that stuck in his mind, Fontaine also recalled an early close-up of actress Isabella Rossellini, who plays a Vatican nun in the film.

“There was a moment where Cardinal Lawrence (played by Fiennes) is giving a speech and we cut to Isabella, who is sitting on a bench outside listening,” he said. “I think there are two shots, one of her hands and one of her face, a very careful camera moves closer to her.”

It was a “very moving moment” for the cinematographer, he said. The majority of “Conclave” was shot at the famous Cinecittà Studios, where Rossellini’s parents, actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini, made films in the 1950s.

“Suddenly I remembered her mother and her father and just her, of course. I mean, Cinecittà is where she was born, in a way. She was born in Rome but she’s a child of Cinecittà. And for me it was quite intense and emotional when we took those pictures with her.”

“Conclave” is in theaters now.