Cinecittà has organized the presence of the Italian films and talents that make up the outstanding titles at the 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (June 30 – July 8). An exceptionally comprehensive collection of pieces of contemporary Italian cinema is represented by 12 films that will compete for the attention of the audience and the judges. Including director Marco Righi’s spectacularly penetrating film Where the Wind Blows, nominated for the Crystal Globe Competition of the Karlovy Vary IFF. The Horizons section will screen the intimate drama Monica, in which Patricia Clarkson excels in the role of a mother, she will also sit on the jury of the Crystal Globe Competition.
A great number of Italian talents will accompany their films in the various sections of KVIFF organized by Cinecittà: director Marco Righi and actors Jacopo Olmo Antinori and Yile Vianello (Where the Wind Blows), director Davide Ferrario (Umberto Eco – A Library of the World), directors Valentina Cicogna and Mattia Colombo (Pure Unknown), director Alessandro Gagliardo (The Last Days of Humanity), director Alessandro Aniballi (Out of the Past), director Giulia Regini (Cut from the Same Cow).
The film Where the Wind Blows, which will be part of the CRYSTAL GLOBE COMPETITION at the 2023 Karlovy Vary IFF, offers a provocative and exceptionally mesmeric interpretation of one of the key New Testament passages. In a small village somewhere in the Apennines, taciturn Antimo divides his time between the local church, his tedious work on the farm and his chaste meetings with his girlfriend. A pivotal encounter with the wild loner Lazzaro awakens in the devout young man the desire to reach the very core of a faith far removed from the regular Sunday sermons delivered by a representative of the Church ’ a powerful institution for which freethinking and devotion to God represent incompatible ideas. The film will be accompanied to the festival by director Marco Righi and representatives of the main roles, actors Jacopo Olmo Antinori and Yile Vianello (present 5th to 9th of July).
The HORIZONS section, which brings a selection of the most interesting titles of the current season from current world production, will offer 7 Italian films: Monica, an intimate portrait of a woman forced by circumstances to face her past, explores the universal themes of forgiveness, aging and the importance of unconditional maternal love. The film suggestively conveys a dive into the heroine’s inner world, focuses on her pain, fears, needs and desires and successfully illustrates the consequences that rejection can have on an individual’s self-esteem. Director Andrea Pallaoro cast Trace Lysette and Patricia Clarkson in the lead roles of mother and daughter.
Umberto Eco – A Library of the World is a cinematic monument, erected as an homage to a man who was fascinated with history and with the miracle of human communication. Told in various chapters, film takes us on a tour of the mental world of a great man. Director and screenwriter Davide Ferrario interweaves archival materials with a tour of Eco’s famous personal library, lets family members speak, gives voice to his lyrics, and touches on themes that have become increasingly important since Eco’s death in 2016. Davide Ferrario will be a guest of the festival from 5th to 8th of July.
The humanist documentary Pure Unknown asks whether even the dead are entitled to dignity and human rights. The central character is the forensic pathologist and anthropologist Cristina Cattaneo. On the autopsy table, she examines nameless bodies every day, which increasingly belong to migrants washed up on Italian shores by the Mediterranean Sea. Determining their identity is very difficult because they often travel without documents. Directors Valentina Cicogna and Mattia Colombo will be guests of the festival from 30th of June to 6th of July.
In his directorial debut, Fireworks, Italian actor Giuseppe Fiorello takes inspiration from true events and tells a deeply moving story about the painful struggles for love that mainstream society doesn’t approve of. It is precisely these that feed the larger struggles, the struggles for the necessary political changes. The film brings viewers to Sicily in the 1980s, where seventeen-year-old Gianni faces bullying because of his minority sexual orientation.
Alice Rohrwacher’s fourth feature La Chimera is typically wild in plot and told in an unmistakably vivid style. It takes place in the 1980s, when Englishman Arthur (Josh O’Connor) returns to a seaside village somewhere in Tuscany. Behind the careless exterior hides an inner turmoil, caused by persistent memories of the lost love of Beniamin.
Marco Bellocchio’s engrossing historical drama Kidnapped returns to the case that began in 1858, when six-year-old Edgardo was forcibly taken from the Mortar Jewish family, based on the Catholic authorities’ claim that he had been baptized as an infant and must therefore be raised as a Catholic. Papal laws are inexorable, and despite the strong protests of the Jewish community, the boy is taken to Rome, where he receives a Catholic education in the papal residence.
Cinephile and documentarian Mark Cousins presents the film March on Rome 100 years after one of the first propaganda films ever was made, A noi! The film was shot in 1922 and covered the Benito Mussolinis March on Rome, an important event in the rise of Italian fascism. Through actress Alba Rohrwacher, Cousins presents the viewpoint of ordinary Italians with the context and visual depiction of the historical, political, and cinematic events.
The IMAGINA section, which presents films with an unconventional approach to narrative and style, a distinctive and radical vision of film language, will this year feature 2 remarkable Italian acts: Enrico Ghezzi, film critic, popularizer of art cinema, film philosopher, columnist and, among other things, filmmaker is for Italian cinema as important as Rossellini, Visconti or Bertolucci. After watching the more than three-hour autobiographical magnum opus The Last Days of Humanity, on which Alessandro Gagliardo collaborated with the aging and ailing bard, this statement will become less controversial for many. Director Alessandro Gagliardo will be a guest of the festival from 30th of June to 4th of July.
The metropolis of Braslia was created almost on a green field and left an irrevocable mark on the local ecosystem. In the film It Is Night in America, filmmaker Ana Vaz goes into the night streets of the city, into the urban wilderness, where animals survive among the constant flow of cars and in endless industrial zones. The experimental film form combines documentary and essayistic elements with a horror atmosphere, to which contributes disturbing music.
The OUT OF THE PAST section, dedicated to classic, cult, rarities, and unfairly neglected films, screened from original or restored copies, invites you to A Claustrocinephilia. Film as a tool through which the author reconstructs memories of the outside world and his own role in it during the pandemic, before covid struck. The film as a refuge during the lockdown, when cinemas are closed and director Alessandro Aniballi’s only companion is his computer, which allows him to mix personal memories with dozens of iconic film shots or scenes throughout the history of the tenth muse. Alessandro Aniballi will be a guest of the festival from 6th to 9th of July.
Italian director Giulia Regini will be among the young European directors of the upcoming generation who will present their work as part of the FUTURE FRAMES an initiative organized by European Film Promotion. Her seventeen-minute film Cut from the Same Cow depicts the complicated relationship between two brothers. While Sergio stayed behind to help his father run the family butcher shop, his brother Flavio never took up his share of the responsibility, falling out with his father and deciding to leave home. When, after a long time, Flavio does appear, Sergio believes for a moment that the broken family ties do not have to be lost. Giulia Regini will be a guest of the festival from 2nd to 6th of July.