News

Maura Delpero’s Italian WW2 drama Vermiglio won best film at the 70th David Di Donatello awards, Italy’s version of the Oscars, held at Rome’s historic Cinecittà film studio on Wednesday night. Delpero also took best directing honors en route to a 7-trophy sweep.

The film, which had its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival last year, beat out the two award frontrunners, Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope, a sumptuous, occasionally surreal tribute to his hometown of Naples, and Andrea Segre’s The Great Ambition, a political biopic about Italian Communist Party leader Enrico Berlinguer, which lead the pack going into the David awards with 15 nominations each. Parthenope went away empty-handed, but The Great Ambition took two awards: Best actor for Elio Germano, who play Berlinguer, and best editing for Jacopo Quadri.

Tecla Insolia won best actress for her starring role in Nicolangelo Gelormini’s Sicilian...

Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope, the director’s sumptuous, occasionally surreal tribute to his hometown of Naples, and Andrea Segre’s The Great Ambition, a political biopic about Italian Communist Party leader Enrico Berlinguer, are the frontrunners for this year’s David Di Donatello awards, Italy’s version of the Oscars.

Parthenope and The Great Ambition picked up 15 nominations each, including for best film and best director. In the best film category, they will face up against Maura Delpero’s Italian WW2 drama Vermiglio and Valeria Golino and Nicolangelo Gelormini’s L’arte della gioia (The Art of Joy), which received 14 nominations each, and the Francesca Comencini-directed drama The Time It Takes, which received four nominations. Other multiple nominees include Margherita Vicario’s debut feature Gloria!, about women musicians at a Church-run establishment in early-1800s Italy, which scored nine nominations, and Francesco Costabile’s crime thriller Familia, with eight.

In the best international film category,...

Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope and Andrea Segre’s The Great Ambition have taken the lead at the nomination stage for Italy’s upcoming 70th David di Donatello awards.

The titles have secured 15 nominations each including for best film and director.

Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio and Valeria Golino and Nicolangelo Gelormini’s The Art Of Joy received 14 nominations each, followed by Gloria! and Familia with nine and eight nominations respectively.

Sorrentino’s Parthenope, following a woman from her birth in 1950 to the current day against the backdrop of Naples, world premiered in Cannes.

Biopic The Great Ambition stars Elio Germano as 1970s and 1980s left-wing political leader Enrico Berlinguer, who nearly led the Communist party into power.

Vermiglio world premiered in Venice where it won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize and went on to be Italy’s 2025 Oscars submission. Set in a remote mountain village in 1944, the drama revolves around...

‘Perfect Strangers’ director Paolo Genovese has done it again with a new concept comedy titled “Madly” that is set to hit the global market after scoring mightily in Italy.

“Madly” – which is titled “FolleMente” in Italy – depicts a first date between a man and a woman in Rome and features all the voices that live in their brains which oscillate between embarrassment and laughter, each played by a different actor. The romance-tinged comedy has scored more than 2 million admissions and grossed more than $18 million at the Italian box office since it’s Feb. 20 local release via Rai Cinema’s 01 Distribution — and is still going strong.

Genovese co-wrote the screenplay with Isabella Aguilar, Lucia Calamaro, Paolo Costella and Flaminia Gressi.

“We are getting remake requests from all over the world,” producer Raffaella Leone tells Variety, adding that this time around “we want to manage things a bit differently” from what happened with “Perfect Strangers,...

Amid major movie market upheavals, Leone Film Group is still the main Italian distributor of top-notch English-language indie film fare, spanning all genres with titles from directors such as Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.

But while in the past Leone Film Group relied on output deals with U.S. indies, such as Lionsgate and Spielberg’s Amblin, these days “we supply ourselves from whomever has worthy product,” says its head of acquisitions Francesco Polimanti. That includes titles such as recent hit “Civil War,” with Kirsten Dunst, “John Wick 4” with Keanu Reeves as the iconic assassin and the upcoming “Dumb Money.”

Polimanti went on a buying spree in May at Cannes, where he picked up a trio from Black Bear, including Guy Ritchie’s next film, “Wife and Dog,” set in the world of British aristocracy. It marks the fifth Ritchie-directed movie that will go out in Italy through Leone.

Italy’s Leone Film Group is taking the legacy of its founder, spaghetti Western master Sergio Leone, to the next level.

As the Rome-based company run by the maestro’s children, Raffaella and Andrea, celebrates its 35th anniversary, it continues to consolidate its standing as the preeminent supplier of U.S. indie product to Italy. The Leone’s film and TV production side has been recently growing with a robust slate of high-end content for the international market.

Having become the top distribution partner in Italy for U.S. indies such as Lionsgate, STX Entertainment, Voltage and Black Bear, the Leone Film Group is now focused on what Raffaella Leone calls the “more difficult task” of “laying the groundwork for our production side in the international arena.”

The group’s Lotus Production label, which is now run directly by Raffaella, has a slew of projects in various stages, with new films by James Gray,...

Penélope Cruz is taking on an Elena Ferrante adaptation.

IndieWire can confirm the “Ferrari” actress is reuniting with “Elegy” director Isabel Coixet for the adaptation of Ferrante’s 2002 “The Days of Abandonment,” which followed Olga, an Italian woman, who loses her grasp on reality after her husband of 15 years abruptly leaves her for another woman.

The big screen adaptation will instead be set in America, as Variety reported, with the script penned by Laurence Coriat (“Summer in Genoa”). “The Days of Abandonment” will be produced by Lotus, a unit of Raffaella and Andrea Leone’s Leone Film Group, and Cruz’s production banner Moonlyon. Cruz’s brother Edu Cruz will also produce along with Marco Perego through their Nimoa Entertainment company.

Director Coixet has recently helmed “Un Amor,” “My Life Without Me,” and “The Secret Life of Words.”

Author Ferrante’s novels have been adapted for the big and small screens,...

Penélope Cruz is set to star as Olga, a writer forced to give up her artistic ambitions when her husband suddenly leaves her and their two young daughters, in Isabel Coixet’s English-language adaptation of Italian author Elena Ferrante’s “The Days of Abandonment.”

The deal to make the film, which is now in development, was signed before the SAG-AFTRA strike. While Cruz did not attend the Venice Film Festival, she elicited raves from critics on the Lido for her performance in Michael Mann’s “Ferrari” as the angry, lonely, grief-ravaged Laura Ferrari, emotionally estranged from her husband Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver).

“The Days of Abandonment,” which will transpose the novel’s original Italian setting to America, reunites the two top Spanish talents following their collaboration on another U.S.-set film, the 2008 drama “Elegy” an adaptation of Philip Roth’s novella “The Dying Animal,” about an affair between a...

Wattpad Webtoon Studios, the entertainment arm of the user-generated fiction and comics entertainment outfit, and Italy’s Leone Film Group have announced two new adaptations based on hit young-adult Wattpad novels.

Taiwan-based author Ann Rae’s romantic mystery “The Locker Exchange,” which is set in a U.S. high school and has over 26 million reads globally on the Wattpad platform, is set to become an English and Italian-language feature film. And “Love Me, Love Me” by Italian writer Stefania S, which has scored 12 million reads in Italy, is to be adapted into an Italian-language series by Leone’s Lotus Production unit.

The two new adaptations expand on an existing deal that Leone inked last year to co-develop a slate of films for the Italian and international marketplace based on original fiction stories from Wattpad. That pact came after the two companies partnered to make a movie based on Blair Holden...

Efm: The Los Angeles-based sales, financing and production company has reported a roaring trade on its marquee sales title here.

Mel Gibson will direct Hacksaw Ridge and Andrew Garfield will star as Desmond Doss, the real-life WWII medic who became the first conscientious objector to receive a Congressional Medal Of Honor.

Cross Creek Pictures is financing the $40-50m project and produces alongside Pandemonium Films.

Rights have gone in Germany (Universum), Italy (Andrea Leone), Spain (Dea Planeta), Scandinavia (Mis Label), South Korea (Pancinema), Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, central America and Latin America pay-tv (Sun), Switzerland (Impuls) and Taiwan (Applause).

Deals also closed in South Africa (M-Net), Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and former Yugoslavia (Freeman Entertainment), Hong Kong (Bravos), Indonesia (Cinema 21), Czech/Slovak (Aqs), Greece (Spentzos), Turkey (Pinema), Indonesia (Cinema 21) and Israel (United King).

Apsara handles the film in Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Asia pay-tv. Entertainment In Motion...

Stuart Ford’s sales and finance powerhouse Im Global has closed a slew of deals on the Andrew Garfield-starring and Mel Gibson-directed Hacksaw Ridge, confirming its pre-market status as one of the hottest titles at this year’s Efm.

Universum has bought the project from Germany, Andrea Leone for Italy, Dea Planeta for Spain, Mis Label for Scandinavia, Pancinema for Korea, Sun Distribution for Latin America, Entertainment in Motion for Airlines, M-net for South Africa, Cinema 21 for Indonesia, Impuls for Switzerland, Freeman Entertainment for Poland, Spentzos for Greece, Pinema for Turkey, Applause for Taiwan, Aqs for Czech/Slovak, Bravos for Hong Kong, Freeman Entertainment for selected East European territories, Apsara for Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Asia pay TV, United King for Israel.

The epic film tells the true story of Desmond T Doss, the first conscientious objector in U.S. history to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.