A little bit of Sicily will be coming to the Berlinale with “Off season”, a feature film by Henning Beckhoff, produced by the German Film University Babelsberg “Konrad Wolff ” (producer Valeria Venturelli), which will be presented in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino section.
The movie was filmed around Palermo and Pollina in September and October 2018, and benefited from the logistical support of the Sicilia Film Commission which, also in October, followed the production of the special episode for cinema of the popular TV series “Sara e Marti” broadcast by the Disney Channel, produced by Stand by me, and filmed around Modica (RG), Cava D’Ispica (RG) and Rosolini (SR).

Thanks to the Sensi Contemporanei Cinema program, the Sicilia Film Commission will also be financially supporting productions: 20 feature films and television series, 8 documentaries and 5 shorts, most of which will be made in Sicily in the course of 2019, will benefit from the 2018 open call (the financial endowment of which was €1.5 million).
These include “Tra le onde” by Marco Amenta starring Vincenzo Amato (produced by Eurofilm), which began filming in January in Trapani.
At the end of February Palermo will host the set of “Il delitto Mattarella” by Aurelio Grimaldi, produced by Arancia Cinema and Cine 1 Italia, with Alessio Vassallo, Donatella Finocchiaro, Nino Frassica, Leo Gullotta and Guia Jelo.
At the end of March Emma Dante will also be arriving in Palermo with her movie “Le Sorelle Macaluso”, produced by Minimum Fax.

“L’altro capo del filo” and “Una storia del ‘43”, two episodes of the famous “Inspector Montalbano” series starring Luca Zingaretti, directed by Alberto Sironi and produced by Palomar will be aired between February and March. The locations will be Punta Secca (RG), Scicli, Modica and Ragusa.

Also filmed in Sicily in 2018, with the support of the Film Commission, is the TV feature movie “35° Parallelo”, by Maurizio Zaccaro, set in Lampedusa and starring Sergio Castellitto, Linda Mresy and Raffaella Rea (production by Stemal Entertainment – Ipotesi Cinema with Rai Cinema), and the short “Epicentro”, by Leandro Picarella (produced by Playmaker), with Roberto Latini and Filippo Luna, filmed among the Ruins of Poggioreale (TP), the Archaeological Park of the Valley of the Temples (AG), the international premiere of which was presented at the 75th Venice Film Festival 2018 (International Critics’ Week).

In the first few months of 2019 the launch is planned of a new Open Call by the Sicilia Film Commission (as part of the Sensi Contemporanei program) for the co-funding of new audiovisual productions to be made in Sicily (features, shorts, documentaries and TV series).