Notizie

“Join forces,’ says Susanna Nicchiarelli, Michela Occhipinti, Chiara Bellosi, and Maura Delpero.

Four Italian directors came together in London last week to call for greater support for female film directors in Italy’s male-dominated industry.

Films by female directors comprised just 13 of the total films produced in Italy in both 2019 and 2020, according to data released by Cinecittà, Italy’s largest production studio. However, this is a significant gain on the 2 figure of 2010.

“There is a cultural problem at the root of all this. I realised it when I tried to get my first film done,” said Susanna Nicchiarelli, of her debut fiction feature Cosmonaut,...

The rising clutch of women directors breaking the glass ceiling in Italy’s male dominated film industry is being celebrated by a curated screenings’ series titled The Wave playing this week in London and set to open with Chiara Bellosi’s Berlin Panorama coming-of-age drama “Swing Ride.”

Running June 15-19 at London’s Ciné Lumière, Kensington, after a previous run in Berlin, The Wave has been assembled by Cinecittà’s promotional arm to draw international notice to what chief Carla Cattani says is “a unique time” for female filmmakers in Italy where they are “no longer isolated cases.”

Indeed, as Cattani notes in her introduction to The Wave’s program notes, prior to 2010 it was very rare to find more than two Italian films directed by females within the same year. In fact in 2010, out of 122 Italian films released theatrically only two titles were directed by women.

Cut to a decade later,...

Gabriele Mainetti’s Freaks Out, co-written with Nicola Guaglianone, starring Franz Rogowski, Aurora Giovinazzo, Pietro Castellitto, Giancarlo Martini, Claudio Santamaria, and Giorgio Tirabassi opens Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà’s 21st edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema

Giuseppe Bonito’s A Girl Returned; Paolo Taviani’s Leonora Addio (The Demise Of Luigi Pirandello); Laura Bispuri’s The Peacock’s Paradise (Il Paradiso Del Pavone) starring Dominique Sanda, Alba Rohrwacher, Carlo Cerciello, and Maya Sansa; Chiara Bellosi’s Swing Ride (Calcinculo) with Gaia Di Pietro and Andrea Carpenzano; Nanni Moretti’s Three Floors with Margherita Buy, Adriano Giannini, Elena Lietti, Riccardo Scamarcio, Paolo Graziosi, and Rohrwacher, and Gabriele Mainetti’s Freaks Out, co-written with Nicola Guaglianone, starring Franz Rogowski, Aurora Giovinazzo, Pietro Castellitto, Giancarlo Martini, Claudio Santamaria, and Giorgio Tirabassi are six highlights of Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà’s 21st edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema.

Italy’s robust 2022 Berlinale representation of a half-dozen titles runs the gamut from the latest works by venerable veterans Paolo Taviani and Dario Argento to pics by fresh new Cinema Italiano voices including Chiara Bellosi, whose first film, “Ordinary Justice,” launched from Berlin in 2020.

Taviani, who is 91, is returning to Berlin but alone this time — his filmmaker brother, Vittorio, with whom he won a Golden Bear in 2012 for “Caesar Must Die,” passed away in 2018 — in competition with surreal drama “Leonora Addio,” inspired by a short story by Italian playwright and author Luigi Pirandello.

Argento, who set his 1977 chiller “Suspiria” in Germany, will be at the Berlinale for the first time as a director with Rome-set suspenser “Dark Glasses,” though he was on the fest’s main jury panel in 2001. Film unspools as a Berlinale Special Gala.

Bellosi is back with Panaorama selection “Swing Ride” (“Calcinculo”), about a 15-year-old named...

Chiara Bellosi, whose first work, “Ordinary Justice,” launched from Berlin’s Generation 14plus section in 2020, is back with “Swing Ride” (“Calcinculo”) about an overweight 15-year-old named Benedetta pining for attention in an Italian province where she falls in love with the skinny non-binary Amanda.

A key difference between the two films is that while “Ordinary Justice,” which examined the lives of two families on opposite sides of a murder case, originated from a deeply researched screenplay that Bellosi wrote, “Swing Ride” — premiering in Panorama on Feb. 13 — stems from a prizewinning script proposed to her by Carlo Cresto Dina, her producer, who also discovered Alice Rohrwacher (“Happy as Lazzaro”) and is known for nurturing the cream of Italy’s new cinematic crop.

“It’s a very different process; it was the first time that I had to start from a world that didn’t germinate from me,” said Bellosi about working...

Italy’s Vision Distribution has boarded Berlin Panorama title “Swing Ride,” directed by Chiara Bellosi, and will launch sales at the upcoming EFM on the pic about an overweight teenager named Benedetta who is pining for attention.

“Swing Ride” (“Calcinculo”) is a dark fable set in a small southern Italian town portraying the friendship between Benedetta, played by newcomer Gaia Di Pietro, and the skinny non-binary Amanda, played by Andrea Carpenzano whom Benedetta decides to follow in her “stray world,” as the director puts it in her notes.

Described by Bellosi as depicting an unusual friendship and the experience of empowerment, this coming-of-age film follows Bellosi’s first feature “Ordinary Justice,” which examined the lives of two families on opposite sides of a murder case and launched from Berlin’s Generation 14plus section in 2020.

Both pics are produced by Carlo Cresto Dina’s Tempesta which discovered Alice Rohrwacher and is...

PoetBerlinale have announced the first 62 titles selected for the 72nd edition of their festival, set to take place physically from February 10 — 20.FORUMAfterwater (Dane Komljen)Poet (Darezhan Omirbayev)The Middle AgesEurope (Philip Scheffner)A Flower in the Mouth (Éric Baudelaire)Memoryland (Kim Quy Bui)My Two Voices (Lina Rodriguez)Nuclear Family (Erin Wilkerson, Travis Wilkerson)Super Natural (Jorge Jácome)The United States of America (James Benning)Forum EXPANDEDDragon Tooth (Rafael Castanheira Parrode)Home When You Return (Carl Elsaesser)Jail Bird in a Peacock Chair (James Gregory Atkinson)Sol in the Dark (Mawena Yehouessi)vs (Lydia Nsiah)PANORAMATalking About the Weather (Annika Pinske)The Apartment with Two Women (Kim Se-in)Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power (Nina Menkes)Swing Ride (Chiara Bellosi)Dreaming WallsKlondike (Maryna Er Gorbach)A Love Song (Max Walker-Silverman)Myanmar Diaries (The Myanmar Film Collective)Into My Name (Nicolò Bassetti)Nelly & Nadine (Magnus Gertten)We, Students! (Rafiki Fariala)Until Tomorrow (Ali Asgari...

The 2022 Berlin International Film Festival has revealed its first titles, including seven films that have been invited to the Berlinale Special program. You can see the full list of confirmed films below.

Those seven include Peter Flinth’s Against The Ice, starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Joe Cole, Heida Reed and Charles Dance, and Laurent Larivière’s About Joan, starring Isabelle Huppert, which both play as Berlinale Special Galas.

The Panorama program has unveiled 13 titles, with Generation confirming eight features, and further films set for Forum and Forum Expanded.

The Panorama strand includes Myanmar Diaries, a doc/feature hybrid from the Myanmar Film Collective that highlights violence suffered by Burmese citizens.

“The pandemic has created distances – not only between people but also the way we see the world. Amongst the 2022 selection are films shot during the pandemic, reflecting on how it feels to be disconnected from others. It is with this first...

The Berlin Film Festival has revealed several titles across various programs for the 2022 edition of the festival.

Women directors account for seven of the 13 titles revealed so far in the Panorama section, including U.S. filmmaker Nina Menkes’ “Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power,” emerging German director Annika Pinske’s debut feature “Alle reden übers Wetter” (“Talking About the Weather”), and Maryna Er Gorbach’s Ukrainian war drama “Klondike.”

“The films confirmed so far herald a contemporary, unsparing but also conciliatory cinema in the 2022 Panorama,” said section head Michael Stütz.

Seven films have been unveiled for the festival’s Berlinale Special gala strand, including Peter Flinth’s “Against the Ice,” starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Laurent Larivière’s “About Joan,” featuring Isabelle Huppert, and Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s “Gangubai Kathiawadi,” with Alia Bhatt.

“The pandemic has created distances – not only between people but also the way we see the world. Amongst the 2022 selection are films shot during the pandemic,...

Young Italian director Chiara Bellosi is at the Berlinale with “Ordinary Justice” which examines the lives of two families on opposite sides of a murder case who intersect on the benches outside the room where the case is being tried. This first work, screening in Generation14Plus, is produced by Carlo Cresto-Dina who discovered Alice Rohrwacher and is known for nurturing the cream of Italy’s new cinematic crop. Bellosi spoke to Variety about her interest in the microcosm of courthouses.

What drew you to the subject matter?

I’ve always been fascinated by courthouses. And I’ve done social work for years, so I’ve come across plenty of stories. Courthouses are like a funnel into which all aspects of life flow…Initially I wanted to make a doc about the courthouse as a mirror of the outside world and I proposed it to Carlo. He told me he...

The Berlinale in recent years has been a prime launching pad for Italian films directed by women, which though fewer in number to their male counterparts, make up a considerable portion of the country’s representation on the festival circuit — Alice Rohrwacher (“Happy as Lazzaro”) at Cannes, Susanna Nicchiarelli (“Nico”) at Venice, and Berlin regular Laura Bispuri (“Daughter of Mine”) are all festival faves.

Here is a compendium of new and upcoming Italian films and TV series directed by women including two (out of nine Italian titles overall) in Berlin this year.

“Ordinary Justice”

This first feature by Chiara Bellosi, who previously made several docs, looks at a day in a Turin courthouse where the lives of two women and a young girl on opposite sides of a murder case intersect. In Berlin, Generation 14Plus.

“Faith”

An observational doc by Valentina Pedicini is about a reclusive spiritual sect of kung...

This year’s strong Italian presence at Berlin — a total of nine films in various sections, three of which are in competition — is one of several indicators pointing to an upbeat 2020 for cinema Italiano.

The other positives are that box office is picking up thanks to the Hollywood studios finally releasing more movies day-and-date with the rest of the world in the summer, just as the country’s production pipeline is percolating with a promising mix of new works by masters such as Nanni Moretti and promising up-and-comers like Susanna Nicchiarelli.

Government funding has been increased with more than €400 million ($436 million) allocated for various support schemes, including generous tax incentives for foreign shoots.

The batting average for Italian movies at the local box office, where 2019 admissions were up 14%, is still too low. There were 29 feature films last year that did not even gross much more than €1 million ($1.09 million). Still, the picture could be worse.

New Italian sales company Vision Distribution, headed by veteran executive Catia Rossi, is launching from the European Film Market with a still-small multi-genre slate but big ambitions to become a leading global distributor of Italy’s domestic output.

Having a new player with muscle and expertise specifically dedicated to distributing Italian movies internationally is good news for Italian producers and “signals the vitality” of the country’s current filmmaking output, says Rossi. It also is another sign of a market shift towards sales and production forces increasingly merging.

Vision Distribution’s muscle comes from being the sales arm of a unique content alliance formed in 2016 by pay TV operator Sky Italia and five prominent Italian production companies — ITV-owned Cattleya, Fremantle’s Wildside, Lucisano Media Group, Palomar and Indiana Production — that inked a deal to jointly release their films domestically. Their new international sales arm just takes the pact one step further.

Final titles revealed for the Generation Kplus and Generation 14plus strands.

The Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 20-Mar 1) has revealed the final raft of titles that will comprise its Generation strand and confirmed that 58% of the features and shorts in the youth section are directed by women.

Scroll down for full list of titles

It follows a recent announcement that more than 50% of the films in the official project selection of the Berlinale Co-Production Market are from female directors.

The 43rd edition of Berlin’s Generation sidebar will comprise 59 competition entries from 34 countries, including 29 world premieres.

After revealing 20 films in the strand last month,...