The lively élan of the young Claudia Cardinale, reproduced on the official poster of the 70th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, tends to relegate to the background the news that there are no Italian films (for the second consecutive year) in the main competition and, similarly, also overshadows the fact that Monica Bellucci is hosting the event and that Paolo Sorrentino is on the jury.
Youth is better, the poster suggests; and here our participation could become newsworthy: the large presence of Italians in the fringe sections – 2 films in Un Certain Regard, 3 in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs [Directors’ Fortnight] and 1 at the International Critics’ Week – is nearly entirely made up of newcomers making their debut or presenting their second feature film.

All, except one, Sergio Castellitto, the director of “Fortunata”. This film has been selected for Un Certain Regard, just like the debut work by Annarita Zambrano, “After the war”, starring Giuseppe Battiston, Charlotte Cetaire, Barbora Boboulova, and produced by Movimento Film, in co-production with France’s Piramide International, which is also handling the foreign sales.

“After the war”, which has received support from the Emilia Romagna Film Commission, is set in the Landes region and Bologna in the 1970s, the so-called “years of lead” which, in Italy, were blighted by the terrorism of the Red Brigades. Annarita Zambrano is not new to Cannes, having attended in competition in 2013 with the short, “Ophelia”.

The young Italian cinema wave also invades the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs with three films: “L’intrusa” by Leonardo Di Costanzo (the director already made his debut in 2012 with “ e Interval”), “Cuori Puri” the first feature length movie by Roberto De Paolis and “A Ciambra”, another second feature by the Italian-American director Jonas Carpignano. All three movies were co-produced by Rai Cinema. The protagonist of “L’intrusa” is Giovanna, the founder of the “La Masseria” center in Naples where local mothers can bring their children to get them away from the doctrine and decay of the Mafia. Maria, the young wife of a killer arrested for the murder of an innocent person, seeks refuge and hospitality in this oasis. The film was written by Leonardo Di Costanzo, Maurizio Braucci, Bruno Oliviero and is produced by Tempesta/Carlo Cresto-Dina with Rai Cinema, Amka Films Productions, Capricci.

“Cuori Puri” by Roberto De Paolis is a love story about Stefano and Agnese, two different souls living in diametrically opposed worlds. The film stars Selene Caramazza, Simone Liberati, Barbora Bobulova, Stefano Fresi, Edoardo Pesce, and is a Young Films production with Rai Cinema. It will be released in Italy 25 May.

Both “L’Intrusa” and “Cuori Puri” are distributed in Italy by Valerio De Paolis’ Cinema, and the foreign sales are handled by Match Factory. Currently without an Italian distributor but, strangely, being distributed in Germany by DCM Film Distribution and in France by Haut et Court, is Jonas Carpignano’s film, “A Ciambra”, produced by Stayblack Productions with Rai Cinema, with the support of Lu.Ca. e project was launched last September as the result of an agreement between the regional institutions of Basilicata and Calabria based on projects realized in the two regions through their respective Film Commissions. The lm, starring non-professional actors, tells the epic story of a Romany community that arrives in Southern Italy from Slovenia.

The actors used were the same gypsies who have now settled in Gioia Tauro and some elderly people who, as children, were actually on the journey that opens the story about the friendship between a colored man and a Romany child. The foreign sales of “A Ciambra” are handled by the French Lux Box.