From tonight until June 12, 2018, the 9th Italian Cinema Meetings will be held at the Rialto Cinema.
A week to (re)discover the power of peninsular cinema, which has experienced a resurgence in production since the 1990s.
Premieres, a meeting with director Laura Bispuri, selected and award-winning films from prestigious festivals, documentary… 10 films representing a wide range of the 7th Italian art, often featuring a connection to reality but also set against the background of Italy’s history.
“UNA QUESTIONE PRIVATA” by Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani with Luca Marinelli, Lorenzo Richelmy
Duration: 1h24
Subject: Summer 43, Piedmont. Milton loves Fulvia, who plays with his emotions: she mostly loves the depth of his thoughts and the letters he writes to her. A year later, Milton has joined the Resistance and is fighting alongside other partisans. During a conversation, he learns that Fulvia secretly loved his friend Giorgio, also a partisan. Milton then searches for Giorgio in the fog-covered hills of the Langhe… But Giorgio has just been arrested by the Fascists.
“FIGLIA MIA” (“MY DAUGHTER”) by Laura Bispuri with Valeria Golino, Alba Rohrwacher, Udo Kier
Duration: 1h38 – Selected for the Berlin Festival 2018
Subject: Vittoria, ten years old, lives with her parents in a remote village in Sardinia. During a festive day, she meets Angelica, a woman whose free spirit and provocative attitude contrast with the calm demeanor of her mother, Tina. Vittoria is fascinated, but her mother disapproves of her increasingly frequent visits to the farm where Angelica lives as if outside the world. She doesn’t know that the two women are bound by a secret. A secret that concerns her…
“EUPHORIA” by Valeria Golino With Riccardo Scamarcio, Valerio Mastandrea, Isabella Ferrari
Duration: 2h00
Cannes Festival 2018 – Un Certain Regard.
Subject: A difficult situation gives two estranged brothers the opportunity to get to know each other better. Matteo is a successful young entrepreneur, open-minded, charming, and dynamic. His brother Ettore still lives in the small provincial town where they were born and teaches at the local college. He is a cautious and honest man. Both will discover a strong bond between them.
“IL PADRE D’ITALIA” by Fabio Mollo with Luca Marinelli, Isabella Ragonese, Anna Ferruzzo, Mario Sgueglia
Duration: 1h33 – Amilcar Jury and Young Jury Villerupt Festival 2017
Audience Award Bastia Festival 2018
Subject: Paolo is an introverted and solitary homosexual in his thirties, struggling to get over his breakup with his ex, who wanted to get married and start a family with him. He meets Mia, a six-month pregnant young woman living a dissolute life, in a nightclub.
“IN GUERRA PER AMORE” (“WELCOME TO SICILY”) by Pif with Pif, Miriam Leone, Andrea Di Stefano
Duration: 1h39
Subject: New York, 1943. Arturo dreams of marrying the beautiful Flora, who is already promised to a New York mafia boss. The only way to win her hand is to ask her father directly, who remains in Sicily. Arturo enlists in the American army, unaware that the army has made a pact with the mafia to ensure the landing in Italy…
“LA VITA POSSIBILE” by Ivano De Matteo with Margherita Buy, Valeria Golino, Bruno Todeschini
Duration: 1h47
Subject: La vita possibile is a film about hope, the strength of women, and the ability to be born and reborn again. Anna and her son Valerio flee from a man who destroyed their love with his own hands; rebelling is necessary and sometimes even a duty. The film tells us that a “possible life,” a new path exists.
“7 MINUTI” by Michele Placido with Ottavia Piccolo, Anne Consigny, Clémence Poésy
Duration: 1h28
Subject: Italy, present day. The future of a bankrupt textile factory now depends on a large group, Rochette&Co. The new investors set certain conditions to avoid implementing a massive layoff plan. A circular explicitly asks all female workers to reduce their lunch break by seven minutes, generously offered in productivity to the company. This ultimatum is a sword of Damocles hanging over the employees’ heads. During the staff delegates’ meeting, ten women agree to approve the circular. However, an eleventh and final representative methodically presents opposing arguments. The outcome of the vote, which seemed settled from the start, gradually becomes uncertain…
“DORMEZ PETITES MERVEILLES, IL FERA JOUR DEMAIN” by Rossella Schillaci
Documentary
Duration: 1h19
Subject: Jasmina is a 24-year-old woman who lives in prison with her two children: Lolita, two, and Diego, just a few months old, while her slightly older son lives with their grandmother. The film closely follows the everyday life of this small family, over the months, during moments of hope, waiting, and resilience. The small everyday gestures, bathing, meals, walks along the prison corridors reveal the drama that all mothers would face in a similar situation: the choice between raising their own children close to them, but in prison, or letting them be free without her for an indeterminate period. An intimate and touching portrait of motherhood, responsibility, choices, and the vital energy of childhood, capable even of transforming the prison world.
“DOGMAN” by Matteo Garrone with Adamo Dionisi, Edoardo Pesce, Marcello Fonte (Best Actor Award Cannes 2018)
Duration: 2h00 – Selection Cannes 2018
Subject: In an impoverished suburb, Marcello, a quiet and well-liked dog groomer, sees his friend Simoncino return from prison, a former boxer addicted to cocaine who quickly extorts and bullies the neighborhood. Initially trusting, Marcello gets unwittingly drawn into a criminal spiral. He then learns about betrayal and abandonment, before imagining a fierce revenge…
“SICILIAN GHOST STORY” by Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza With Julia Jedlikowska, Gaetano Fernandez, Corinne Musallari
Duration: 1h57
Subject: In a Sicilian village on the edge of a forest, Giuseppe, 13, disappears. Luna, a classmate, refuses to accept the boy’s disappearance whom she loves and tries to break the code of silence. To find him, at the risk of her own life, she attempts to reach the dark world where her friend is imprisoned and to which the lake offers a mysterious access. SICILIAN GHOST STORY revisits the myth of Romeo and Juliet in the ruthless world of the mafia.
