Produzione MAD Entertainment
fotografie di scena Mario Spada
The 2022 ST. ALi Italian Film Festival presented by Palace, Australia’s preeminent event celebrating the culture and cinema of Italy, returns next week, promising to transport viewers on a favoloso escape to Italy.
The ST. ALi Italian Film Festival, will open Tuesday September 13 with the Australian premiere of Italian Box Office hit BELLI CIAO from popular comedy duo Pio and Amedeo. It follows two formerly inseparable friends who reunite in their hometown in Puglia after years apart, resulting in an entertaining north vs south culture clash.
From Official Competition in Cannes comes this year’s Festival Centrepiece: Mario Martone’s new drama, NOSTALGIA, featuring a superb performance from Pierfranceso Favino, about a man who returns to his hometown of Naples after forty years and rediscovers the city’s codes and rules, facing a past that haunts him. NOSTALGIA is what it used to be, classically paced and framed Italian cinema, the ghosts of the past haunting the present making the future a nightmare.
Tough, powerful, NOSTALGIA is a film that sears itself into memory, as nourishing as a reminiscence as painful as regret.
THE KING OF LAUGHTER is a fascinating biography of Neapolitan comic theatre legend Eduardo Scarpetta, played by Toni Servillo. As well as an insight into the theatrical conventions of his time, it is also an insight to his unconventional domestic life, creator of two families, each feeding into his theatrical life, his progeny both legitimate and illegitimate, fashioned, even forced, into becoming performers in his productions. THE KING OF LAUGHTER is an expansive examination of a public persona and the very different private life of a larger than life character.
BREAKING UP IN ROME (Lasciarsi un giorno a Roma) – A love letter to the Italian capital, this brilliant romantic comedy directed by and starring Edoardo Leo delves into the difficulties a couple faces when they separate after many years living together. Redolent of the Pina Colada Song, Zoe ( Marta Nieto) fears she has fallen out of love with Tom (Edoardo Leo) and resorts to an Agony Aunt to filter the parting process. Unbeknowst to her, Tom is the Agony Aunt to which she confides and through this assumed anonymity confessions are made, truths laid bare, corrections instigated, veneers demolished.
A parallel story of Tom’s pal from university days, married to the mayor of Rome, going through his own relationship change makes BREAKING UP IN ROME a double treat. Mkae that a triple treat when you bask in the exquisite visuals of the Eternal City.
THE SHADOW OF THE DAY(L’ombra del giorno) is a bitter sweet, multi layered film of misplaced loyalties, love and loss set after the declaration of racial laws in Fascist Italy.
An invalided veteran of the First World War, Lucianno, is a restaurateur whose life changes when Anna, a girl with a dangerous secret starts to work at his restaurant. Going with the flow of Fascist governance, focusing on the benefits bestowed by the regime, he nevertheless has qualms with aspects of Mussolini’s policies.
THE SHADOW OF THE DAY is an exceedingly dramatic love story starring a smouldering Riccardo Scamarcio and rising star Benedetta Porcaroli. Not to be missed.
Also not to be missed ENNIO – THE MAESTRO (Ennio). From Oscar-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso, Malena) it celebrates the life and legacy of the legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone and features interviews with Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, Bernardo Bertolucci and Hans Zimmer, plus the man himself prior to his death aged 91. There will be a special musical tribute event at the Chauvel Cinema which will pay homage to Morricone’s amazing body of work.
And the festival will be honouring the centenary of the birth of celebrated auteur Pier Paolo Pasolini in a retrospective presenting three of his iconic film adaptations of literary works: THE CANTERBURY TALES (I racconti di Canterbury) on its 50th anniversary, ARABIAN NIGHTS (Il fiore delle mille e una notte) and THE DECAMERON (Il Decameron) presented by Italian Cultural Institute Sydney.
Closing the festival this year will be the Oscar-winning trilogy of romantic comedies YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW (Ieri, oggi, domani) starring the inimitable Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. From acclaimed director Vittorio De Sica, this classic will be a fitting way to bid arrivederci to the festival.
ALL TICKETS NOW ON SALE. For more information visit:www.italianfilmfestival.com.au
The 2022 ST.Ali Italian Film Festival presentedby Palace screens in the following locations:
Sydney 13 September –12 October, Palace Central, Palace Norton St, Palace Verona, Chauvel Cinema
