Heading back to London’s South Kensington’s Ciné Lumière from 20th-24th March is the 14th edition of the Cinema Made In Italy festival which highlights the very best of Italian cinema.
The annual festival, curated by Adrian Wootton OBE, will bring ten new releases and one classic feature to the big screen over the four days, along with accompanying Q+As from the filmmakers behind the features.
We’ve been lucky enough to have a sneak peek at what is playing at this year’s event, including several of the films having their UK premiere as part of the festival.
Wootton, the CEO of Film London & British Film Commission, said “Showcasing the very best in contemporary Italian filmmaking from established and emerging talent this year’s line-up of Cinema Made In Italy is a diverse, exciting and distinctive selection of films. I am delighted to curate and host the 14th edition of this unique event and to be presenting this fantastic group of films and their makers to UK audiences.”
Opening this year is Edoardo De Angelis’ Commandante, a brilliant work which also had the honour of opening the Venice Film Festival last August. The film is an epic war movie set during the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest campaign of World War II.
Edoardo De Angelis is in attendance on the opening night to accompany his film and take part in a live Q+A.
“Showcasing the very best in contemporary Italian filmmaking from established and emerging talent this year’s line-up of Cinema Made In Italy is a diverse, exciting and distinctive selection of films.“
Festival curator Adrian Wootton OBE
Set in the picturesque Ligurian Riviera in Italy, Holiday is also a stand-out and revolves around a teenage girl, Veronica (Margherita Corradi), who is released from prison after a two-year on-remand detention following the horrific double murder of her mother and her lover. Accused of the crime, Veronia is found not guilty and the film examines her reintegration into the local village population where she remains heavily under the spotlight, especially in the tabloid press. With her on that fateful night was her best friend Giada (Giorgia Frank) who served as a key witness in her prosecution and only she, and her father (Alessandro Tedeschi), remain as a support for the impressionable teen. Stuck in a void, her future in doubt as she continues to be persecuted by all around her, the film is told both in the period following her release and in flashback with the court case in which she was eventually acquitted playing out before us. Director Edoardo Gabbriellini, along with his co-writers, has constructed a film almost reminiscent of awards-magnet Anatomy of a Fall; a did-she-or-didn’t-she mystery set in a sunkissed Italian paradise during a hot summer that’ll have viewers guessing until the end.
Director Edoardo Gabbriellini attends the festival and will also answer audience questions on stage after the film’s screening.
Related: Full line-up revealed for the 2024 Cinema Made In Italy festival in London
There’s also Paola Cortellesi’s There Is Still Tomorrow which has to be on your list to see as it is Italy’s highest-grossing film of 2023 – even beating Barbie. Ginevra Elkann’s I Told You So offers up something a little different – a contemporary drama set during a January heatwave in Rome where the locals are starting to lose control. The film has a wonderful international cast that includes Valeria Golino, Greta Scacchi, and Danny Huston and is well worth checking out. Both filmmakers will offer Q+As post screening.
Laura Luchetti adapts Cesare Pavese’s novel The Beautiful Summer, a story about a young girl named Ginia (Yile Yara Vianello) who begins an electric affair with a painter she meets in the dazzling artists’ world in 1938 Turin. The ‘beautiful summer’sees the young seventeen-year-old confronting adulthood, led into an unknown world by the sensual and provocative, Amelia (Deva Cassel). Laura Luchetti is attending the festival to take part in a post-screening Q+A.
Italian-born Stefano Sollima returns to his home city of Rome after helming streams of Hollywood blockbusters including the Michael B. Jordan action film Without Remorse and the sequel to Sicario. With Adagio, Sollima remains in the crime genre with this film revolving around a sixteen-year-old named Manuel (Gianmarco Franchini) in a world of trouble after mixing with some criminals operating at a level way above him. Sollima reunites with his Gomorrah co-writer Stefano Bises to delve into Rome’s dark crime underworld that will ignite fans of the genre and the Italian filmmaker’s particular brand of crime thriller.
Also playing is Tommaso Santambrogio’s Cuban-set Oceans Are The Real Continents, playing at the festival on the 21st March followed by a Q+A with the filmmaker, and Simone Massi’s animated feature Nowhere which also screens on the same evening.
The jewel in the crown of the line-up for 2024 must be the Josh O’Connor-led La Chimera which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last year. The impressive feature, directed by Alice Rohrwacher, gets its London premiere at the event following that stunning debut at Cannes and the festivals around Europe that followed where it picked up multiple awards. O’Connor plays Arthur, a British archaeologist who gets involved in a network of stolen Etruscan artefacts. Set in 1980s Tuscany, the feature also stars Carol Duarte, Alba Rohrwacher, and Isabella Rossellini. It’s a stunning feature equalling the might of Rohrwacher’s excellent 2018 Happy As Lazzaro which also debuted at Cannes that year. La Chimera closes the Cinema Made In Italy festival on the evening of the 24th.
Tickets and more info can be found on the official site, as well as details for this year’s classic screening – 1951’s Bellissima by Luchino Visconti, a 4K restoration, and the family screening of Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach’s animated feature Chicken For Linda!
Cinema Made In Italy runs at the Ciné Lumière in South Kensington, London from 20th – 24th March.
