THE SHADOW OF THE DAY
(L’ombra del giorno)
Directed by: Giuseppe Piccioni
Drama
Duration: 125’
Year: released in Italy on Feb. 24th, 2022
Production: Lebowski, Rai Cinema
Film set in a provincial town (Ascoli Piceno) in the late 1930s. Luciano, a Fascist sympathiser, like the vast majority of Italians, is the owner of a restaurant, who nevertheless believes he can live his life according to rules he has set himself, in a sort of isolation from the outside world. But at the window overlooking the old square, along with the worrying signs of something that is about to happen in the world, a young woman appears bearing a secret. Her name is Anna and she manages to get a job in the restaurant. From that point on, life will never be the same for Luciano and among the dangers he faces, there is the greatest of all: love. The shadow of the day is a love story set in those difficult years.
MARKET SCREENINGS:
Sunday May 22, 16.30, Palais E
Monday May 05, 16.00, Palais B
FLOWING
(Piove)
Directed by: Paolo Strippoli
Drama / Horror
Duration: 96’
Year: 2022
Production: Propaganda Italia Production, in association with Polifemo. An Italy-Belgium coproduction with Gapbusters
After receiving the Best Director Award at the 2021 Taormina Film Festival for his film debut A Classical Horror Story, Paolo Strippoli presents Flowing, a drama-horror, defined as a coming of (R)age, set in a silver-tinted Rome, constantly on the verge of exploding. An unusual event pervades the city, when it rains. A sinister steam of unknown origin and composition comes out of the street manholes. No one knows that those who breathe in the mysterious substance will have to deal with what they repress, their darkest instincts, their anger. Not even the Morel family.
MARKET SCREENINGS:
Friday 20/05, 16.00, Lerins 4
Monday 23/05, 14.15, Palais I
SEPTEMBER
(Settembre)
Directed by: Giulia Louise Steigerwalt
Comedy
Duration: 110’
Year: scheduled to be released in Italy on May, 5th 2022
Production: Groenlandia, Rai Cinema
It happens on a September day that three characters realize that the life they are living is not the one they dreamed of. That happiness is a far away idea but still possible. A choral story that explores human relationships, our deepest nature, the search for a more authentic connection between people. From the screenwriter of Moglie e Marito, Croce e Delizia and il Campione, a first work made of existential melancholy, tight dialogues and great expressive freedom.
MARKET SCREENING:
Monday 23/05, 13.45, Arcades 1
CASANOVA’S RETURN
(Il Ritorno di Casanova)
Directed by: Gabriele Salvatores
Drama
Duration: 90’
Year: Unreleased, 2022
Production:Indiana Production, Rai Cinema, BA.BE Productions
Leo Bernardi is a successful and acclaimed Italian director. He’s approaching the end of his career but he cannot accept his slow decline. He has just finished shooting his last movie and he’s deeply sad. The movie is inspired by the novel about Casanova written by Arthur Schnitzler, a character so similar to the director, even more than he could imagine. Schnitzler’s Casanova is aged, glory days are over: he lost his charm and his attraction to women, he’s broke and no more eager to travel through Europe. After a long exile, he just wants to go back to Venice, his homeland. While traveling home Casanova meets a girl, Marcolina. She reawakens his desire, lost for years. So, he tries to seduce her but that leads him to a tragic understanding: he’s an old man now. It’s not by chance that Leo Bernardi decided to tell this story right now, in a pivotal moment of his life and career. The destiny of both Casanova and his director leads them to a final confrontation.
MARKET SCREENING:
Thursday 19/05, 16.00, Lerins 2
NATURAL LEFTY
(Mancino Naturale)
Directed by: Salvatore Allocca
Drama, Comedy
Duration: 107’
Year: released in Italy on March 31st, 2022
Production:Emma Film, Promenades Films, Rai Cinema
The determination of a single mother willing to go beyond her possibility to give her son a chance in the ruthless world of professional football. But behind this dream there is an open account with the past that Isabella, precisely for the sake of her son, will be forced to settle.
MARKET SCREENING:
Wednesday 18/05, 18.30 Lerins 1
GIANNI SCHICCHI
Directed by: Damiano Michieletto
Musical
Duration: 75’
Year: Released in Italy on November 2021
Production: Albedo Production, Genoma Films, Do Consulting & Production, Rai Cinema
A rich Tuscan merchant named Buoso Donati dies suddenly, at home. His death is shrouded in mystery. All of Buoso’s relatives rush to mourn his passing, but in reality they are just waiting to find out where the old man’s money will go to. They search the house looking for the will. When they find it, they discover that Buoso Donati has left everything to the nearby friary, without leaving anything to his greedy relatives. Undecided over what to do, the relatives turn to Gianni Schicchi, a shrewd fixer famous for being able to move among the loopholes of the law with ease. Initially Schicchi refuses to help them because of the contemptuous attitude that the aristocratic Florentine family had always shown towards him. But his daughter Lauretta, who was in love with Rinuccio, Donati’s young nephew, compels him to reconsider especially when he discovers that the two are expecting a child. Schicchi comes up with a plan. Since nobody knows about the old man’s death, he orders Buoso’s corpse to be hidden so that he can take his place and dictate a new will. The relatives accept the idea. Pretending to be Buoso Donati, Schicchi dictates his last will and testament to the notary.
BLA BLA BABY
Directed by: Fausto Brizzi
Comedy
Duration: 94’
Year: 2022
Production: Eliseo Entertainment, Rai Cinema
This is the first film in which children have their own say. Luca, a janitor who works in the nursery school of a multinational corporation, finds out he has a superpower: he can actually speak with babies. While they express themselves to him normally, however, for everybody else they are “jabberwocky”. Thanks to his talent and to his little helpers, Luca will win over one of the babies’ mothers. In the meantime he will save the corporation and his project from an evil CEO.
THE DEN
(La Tana)
Directed by: Beatrice Baldacci – debut film
Drama
Duration: 90’
Year: 2021
Production:Lumen Films, Biennale College Cinema
Awarded the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Award at the Biennale College Cinema 2021, The Den is a teen drama about a nineteen-year-old boy, Giulio, who gives up his summer vacation to help his parents with their work in the countryside. A twenty-year-old girl arrives in the uninhabited house next door to spend the holidays. Lia is a bold, grumpy, and secretive girl. Shy and naif Giulio feels attracted to her and cannot stop thinking about her. She initiates him to increasingly dangerous games, but also hides an unimaginable secret in that house where no one is allowed to set foot.
MARKET SCREENING:
Friday 23/05, 18.30, Palais E
FESTIVAL & AWARDS:
La Biennale di Venezia 2021: Biennale College – Cinema
FREAKS OUT
Directed by: Gabriele Mainetti – International award-winning / box-office success director
Historical-fantasy / Drama / Circus
Duration: 141’
Year: 2021
Production: Andrea Occhipinti, Gabriele Mainetti, a Goon Films, Lucky Red with Rai Cinema in co-production with GapBusters in collaboration with VOO and BE
After the success of They Call Me Jeeg (2015), Gabriele Mainetti comes back to the big screen with another innovative movie, Freaks Out, presented In Competition at the 78th Venice Film Festival. Set in bombarded Rome in 1943, the movie tells the story of Matilde, Cencio, Fulvio, and Mario, who live like siblings in a circus managed by Israel, their boss, but most of all a father figure to them. While looking for an escape route to get as far away from the conflict, Israel mysteriously disappears leaving the four characters by themselves, with no perspective. Left alone, the four “circus freaks” feel lost in the occupied and under fire Italian capital. In the meanwhile, someone sets his eyes on the four characters and has got a plan that could change their destinies as well as the course of history.
MARKET SCREENING:
Friday 20/05, 18.30, Palais I
FESTIVAL & AWARDS:
De Rome à Paris 2022
Göteborg Film Festival 2022: Gala
IFFR – International Film Festival Rotterdam 2022: Limelight
Busan International Film Festival 2021: Flash Forward
La Biennale di Venezia 2021: Venezia 78 – Leoncino d’Oro Award, Lizzani Award,
Soundtrack Stars Award
Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia 2021: Oficial Fantàstic Competició
Fantastic Fest 2021: Best Actor (Franz Rogowski)
YAYA & LENNIE – THE WALKING LIBERTY
Directed by: Alessandro Rak – International award-winning director
Animation
Duration: 90’
Year: 2021
Production: Mad Entertainment and Rai Cinema
Presented in Competition at the 74 Locarno Film Festival Yaya & Lennie – The Walking Liberty is an animated tale set in a post-apocalyptic world with a stunningly unique visual style. The world has come to an end. Nature has taken back possession of the planet, covering it in a blanket of jungle. A new society, the “Institution”, is attempting to thrive from the ruins of the old world and strives to reinstate a sense of order. But not everybody accepts to succumb to a process of civilization. The protagonists of the story, Yaya and Lennie, the free spirits of the jungle, are striving to find their place in the world. Yaya is an intelligent 15-year-old girl of mixed ethnicity with an uncouth character who takes care of Lennie, a big and tall man in his twenties with a mental disability.
MARKET SCREENING:
Thursday 19th, 18.30, Palais I
FESTIVAL & AWARDS:
Italy on screen today New York – Film&TvSeries Fest 2021
Locarno Film Festival 2021: Piazza Grande
Madrid Italian Film Festival 2021: Lungometraggi
BLUE EYES
(Occhi Blu)
Directed by: Michela Cescon – debut film
Thriller
Duration: 86’
Year: 2021
Production: Tempesta, Palomar, Tu Vas Voir, Rai Cinema,
International acclaimed actress Valeria Golino is the protagonist of Blue Eyes, a thriller movie shot in a nocturnal and evocative Rome. She’s an ordinary woman and a mysterious robber beyond suspicion. A police officer who is on her trail asks for the help of a Parisian friend known as “The Frenchman”, notorious for having solved apparently impossible cases. The chase becomes a challenging game with unforeseeable consequences.
FESTIVALS & AWARDS:
Cinema Italian Style – Los Angeles 2021
Italy on screen today New York – Film & TV Series Fest 2021
Taormina Film Fest 2021: Out of Competition
Villerupt Italian Film Festival 2021: Competition
THE HIDDEN CHILD
(Il Bambino Nascosto)
Directed by: Roberto Andò – International award-winning / box-office success director
Drama / LGBTQ
Duration: 110’
Year: 2021
Production: BiBi Film and Rai Cinema
Closing movie of the 78th edition of the Venice Film Festival, The Hidden Child is the story of Ciro, a young boy, who finds shelter in the apartment of an elderly man, Gabriele, a quiet and educated piano teacher. The local criminal organization is targeting Ciro because he is responsible for pickpocketing the main criminal boss’ mother. The relationship between Ciro and Gabriele seems conflicting at first. If the boy has a wildly fierce and impetuous nature, the man is a solitary soul who hides frustrations and secret passions. The two try to get along with each other and, in the end, Gabriele will have to make tough decisions to free the boy and himself as well.
FESTIVAL & AWARDS:
Viva il Cinema! Journées du film italien de Tours 2022: Panorama
Appointment with the Italian Cinema in Istanbul 2021
Chicago International Film Festival 2021: Masters
Italy on screen today New York – Film&TVSeries Fest 2021
La Biennale di Venezia 2021: Out of Competition
Madrid Italian Film Festival 2021: Official Selection
Villerupt Italian Film Festival 2021: Out of Competition