Every year, the Shanghai International Film Festival will have the "Global Village" overseas new film country exhibition unit, of which "Focus on Italy" is one of the most popular national exhibitions for the audience, and this year's "Focus on Italy" unit has been upgraded. The Shanghai International Film Festival will once again join hands with Cinecitta, Italy's largest and world's second largest film and television production base, following the screening of films related to the "Centenary of Fellini's Birth".
, jointly recommend these ten Italian films to Shanghai audiences, they are:
"Macaluso's Past", which won the 2020 Venice Film Festival Parsinti Award for Best Picture and Best Actress; "Anna", a secret room mystery film that reveals the deadly secret of a female writer; "No More Silence", a comedy about how women in the workplace counterattacked; "Carnivore", which won the Best Screenplay Award in the Horizon unit of the Venice Film Festival in 2020; a restored re-cut version of the gangster film "Gomorrah", which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival; the tear-jerking romance film "She Says To Me Again" that presents transcendence of life and death in multiple dimensions. The Alzheimer's film "Sanremo Memory", which seeks love in the black hole of memory; "Starry Sky in the Slum", which is about the past and present lives of the slums of the Ghetto of Rome; "Romantic Raiders", a pair of men and women who do not fight and do not know each other; "Our Father", which reconstructs the assassination attempt during the social turmoil in Italy in the 1970s.
Here's a closer look at each of them:
Macaluso's past
The Macaluso Sisters
-2020-
Highlights: Twelve actors transform into five sister flowers
The five fatherless and motherless sisters, who rent out their pigeons for a living, are broken by the unexpected death of their little sister. Adapted by Italian female director Emma Dante based on her own stage play of the same name, the film uses twelve actors to interpret the different stages of the five sisters' lives, creating time and space jumps with stunning visual effects, telling the heartbreak of an old house in a sad and nostalgic narrative style, allowing the audience to immerse themselves in the summer beaches of Sicily and the noisy life of girls. The film won the 2020 Venice Film Festival Parsinette Award for Best Picture and Best Actress.
anna
Anna Rosenberg
-2021-
What to watch: The deadly secret of a female writer
Anna, the female writer, is summoned to the police station, and after a tit-for-tat conversation with the sheriff, she discovers a heartbreaking secret that brings her to death. The debut of Italian director Michel Moscatelli, the whole film is like a gripping chamber play, through dialogue, eyes and detailed actions to show the heart of the characters, revealing the direction of the plot. Claudia Jerrini, a well-known Italian actress who is more than half a hundred years old, uses fluent French dialogue to interpret neurotic female writers throughout the whole process, and completes a climactic confrontation scene with the pressing sheriff, and the ending is also unexpected.
No more silence
Say It Loud
Highlights: The counterattack game of the working woman "Luthor"
Julia's life is a mess - her husband's snoring makes her sleepless at night, she has to use ice cream and TV dramas to pass the time, but during the day she has to face panda eyes and messy hair and encounter workplace blockages. She is a good old man, but she ends up worthless... This film is the latest romantic light comedy by Italian director Guido Caesar, remade from the 2016 Chilean comedy, with slightly adjusted plot adjustments. Guido Caesar was twice shortlisted for the main competition section of the Venice Film Festival. Italian David Award winner Valentina Lodoveni vividly portrays the plight of a working woman, most of the plot is familiar to the audience as if it were experienced, and the exaggerated and sexy performance fuels the comedic effect.
carnivore
The Predators
What to watch: The kaleidoscope of the weak and the strong
One is an old-fashioned aristocratic family in the middle of the outside, the other is a civilian family doing illegal business, and a car accident entangles two distinct groups of people, each pregnant with a ghost fetus, and they stage a black comedy. This film is the debut of the italian young Italian actor Pietro Castelito from the film family (he also played the role of a clumsy boy in the film), chic cinematography and rich group scenes are one of the highlights of the film, and the well-conceived plot and the dislocation of the timeline bring the audience a kind of "puzzle" fun. The film won the Best Screenplay Award in the Horizon section of the 2020 Venice Film Festival.
Gomorrah: New version
Gomorrah: New Edition
-2021-(New Lite)
What to watch: a new cut version of the phenomenon-level Italian gangster theme
In 2008, The Italian contemporary film master Matteo Galloni won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for "Gomorrah" and won five awards, including the European Film Award for Best Picture. Based on Robert Saviano's novel of the same name, the film is set against the backdrop of the traditional gangster criminal organization Gomora, mobilizing non-professional actors to participate in the performance, and revolving around five groups of gangster villains, using a documentary photography style, touching on the corrupt system of Italian gangsters from the bottom up. In 2020, inspired by his son, Galloni re-edited the film and handed it over to the Bologna Film Restoration Institute for 4K restoration, the new version is 12 minutes shorter than the original theatrical version, incorporating new explanatory text and dubbing, which can be described as a continuation of the Italian gangster theme myth.
She said to me again
We Still Talk
What to watch: Husband's time-lapse love notebook
The wife died after 65 years with her husband, who told a writer their love story. The film is the latest work directed by Italian David Award for Best Director and film master Pupi Awati. Together with his son, Tomazzo Avati, he adapted Giuseppe Scabi's autobiographical novel of the same name, unfolding the story in a two-line structure by focusing on the dark lines of the original work, and reconstructing the scenes of life through complex cross-editing under nostalgic tones, shuttling real people between the 1950s and the "now", memory and dreams. It is worth mentioning that this film also quotes the film history classic "The Seventh Seal", which cleverly points out the main theme in the form of a film, and presents a tear-jerking love beyond life and death in multiple dimensions. The film was nominated for best adapted screenplay and best actor at the 2021 Italian David Awards.
San Remo Memory
San Remo
What to watch: The search for a lover in the black hole of memory
Bruno met Tussa at a nursing home, and the two of them with Alzheimer's disease seemed to be happy first acquaintances every day. The film is a new work written and directed by Italian director Miloslav Mandic, inspired by an early visit to his uncle who lives in a nursing home. Mandick explores the life of the elderly in an isolated forest nursing home with gentle brushstrokes, and connects the common memories and emotions of people through the song "I'm Still Young" performed by the famous female singer Glen Quatti. The film enhances sound, creates a sense of movement, and creates a comfortable and closed world that can be listened to.
Starry sky over the slums
A Starry Sky above
the Roman Ghetto
What to watch: The hope of an old photo
Sophia, a high school student, accidentally finds an old photo and a letter and decides to search with her friends for the secret behind it. Italian multi-habitat artist Julius Beth wrote and directed his latest masterpiece, focusing on the slums of Rome's Jewish quarter. The film uses black and white and color images to "connect" the suffering of the Jews of World War II with the living conditions of contemporary people, and uses the narrative technique of a detective film to uncover the irreparable wounds in the human history behind the photos. Through the cooperation of teenagers of different religious beliefs to find intricate mysteries, the film outlines school life, romantic love, family estrangement, and faith collision one by one, bringing a relay race of love across faiths.
Romantic Raiders
Romantic Guide to Lost Places
What to see: To heal, go on a tour
A drunken uncle mistakenly broke into the home of a female blogger who relied on imagination to "travel", and the two formed an indissoluble relationship. The film is the third work written and directed by the emerging director Giorgia Farina, bringing together British film star Cliff Owen, Cannes film queen Jelena Jacob and Italian David Award actress Jesmin Trika to stage a mix of English, French and Italian spiritual healing road films. The film uses "Week" as a narrative chapter, depicting a pair of men and women with a huge age difference, who do not fight and do not know each other, and gradually analyze the individual spiritual dilemmas living in lies, at the same time, through the search for forgotten corners across Europe to achieve personal spiritual leaps, in a light and slow tone to stitch the trauma caused by memory and emotion.
Our father
Our Father
What to watch: Use imagination against the devil of reality
Claudio Noche, winner of the Best Short Film Award at the Venice Film Festival, wrote and directed his latest masterpiece, based on his true childhood experiences, and takes place in Italy, where terrorism was rife in 1976, and tells the story of a young boy who witnessed the psychological shadow caused by his father's assassination attempt. The director begins with flashbacks, reconstructing the scenes of that year by tapping into his own subconscious, and looking at the cruel adult world from the perspective of children. The film shows the psychological haze of fear and uneasiness through handheld lenses and extreme tones, blurs reality and fantasy, and highlights the alternative growth path of children whose lives are misplaced. Italian star Pierre Francesco Favino won the 2020 Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup Best Actor Award for his realistic portrayal of the father's figure in the film.
Stay tuned to us and be the first to grasp the blockbuster list of the 24th Shanghai International Film Festival in 2021.
Note: In case of change in the film schedule, the actual schedule shall prevail.