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Twin directors Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, who are known to Berlin Film Festival audiences for stylishly gritty dramas “Boys Cry” and “Bad Tales,” are back with eclectic detective series “Dostoevskij,” premiering in the fest’s Berlinale Special section.

Set in the stark Roman hinterland, the six-episode show — produced by Sky Studios with Rome’s Paco Cinematografica — stars Filippo Timi as Enzo Vitello, a policeman whose mind is warped by an incident involving his daughter Ambra. He winds up on the trail of a ruthless serial killer, nicknamed Dostoevskij because of the letters full of gruesome details that he leaves at crime scenes. Haunted by the killer’s words, the cop embarks on a dangerous solo investigation, getting closer and closer to a disturbing existential truth.

“Dostoevskij,” which marks the D’Innocenzo brothers’ TV debut, stemmed from Sky Studios Italia chief Nils Hartmann asking them if they wanted to create a...

Italian twin directors Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo have started shooting in Rome on “Dostoevskij,” an eclectic detective drama involving a policeman with a troubled past.

This first TV series written and directed by the D’Innocenzo brothers – who are known on the festival circuit for dark dramas “Boy’s Cry,” “Bad Tales” and “America Latina” – is an in-house Sky Studios production produced by the Comcast-owned pay-tv player with Rome’s Paco Cinematografica.

Filippo Timi stars as Enzo Vitello, a sharp detective with a troubled past, who winds up on the blood trail of a ruthless serial killer, nicknamed Dostoevskij because of letters full of gruesome details that he leaves at crime scenes.

Haunted by the killer’s words, the policeman embarks on a dangerous solo investigation, getting closer and closer to a disturbing existential truth.

Rounding out the “Dostoevskij” cast are Gabriel Montesi (“Bad Tales”), Carlotta Gamba (“Dante”) and...

Andrea Carpenzano plays a trap music star sucked into a spiral of self-destruction in the second film from the Italian director. Sky has announced the beginning of filming, between Rome and the Trentino-Alto Adige region, on Lovely Boy, the second film from Francesco Lettieri after Ultras, which was released on Netflix in March 2020. The new Sky Original film is produced by Indigo Film in co-production with Vision Distribution and Sky, with support from the Alto Adige Film Commission, and will premiere on Sky and Now. A director of music videos for artists such as Liberato, Calcutta and Thegiornalisti, in Lovely Boy, Francesco Lettieri tells the story of the rise and fall of a star of trap music. The lead actor is Andrea Carpenzano, who was noted in 2018 for his appearance in Boys Cry, the debut from the brothers Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, and who later confirmed his talent...

Superbly shot, the D’Innocenzo brothers’ film focuses on families, neighbourly envy and the feral behaviour of men which culminates in tragedy

The 32-year-old D’Innocenzo brothers, Damiano and Fabio, are not newcomers; they shot a feature called Boys Cry in 2018 and made script contributions to many others, including Matteo Garrone’s Dogman. But this is their breakthrough as writer-directors: Favolacce, translated as Bad Tales, which won the Silver Bear award for screenplay at the Berlin film festival last year.

It is a superbly shot, viscerally acted ensemble drama of group dysfunction among blue-collar families in the Rome suburbs at the tail end of a sweltering summer. The children prepare to go back to school where a sinister science teacher is to have a catastrophic influence. The ingenious premise is that the narrator has discovered a child’s diary with blank pages and continues the journal in fictional form. This film is the result.

Italy’s Fabio and Damiano D’Innocenzo, who just scooped screenwriting honors at the Berlin Film Festival for their dark drama “Bad Tales,” are set for their first TV series — a project that will also mark the first Italian original produced in-house under the Sky Studios banner.

Details are being kept under wraps of the new Sky Studios skein written and directed by the hot Italian directorial duo, who are twins, beyond that it will be “an investigative noir that delves into the human soul in all its abysmal complexity,” they told Variety.

Sky Studios is the Comcast-owned pan-European pay-tv operator’s dedicated production arm, which has been ramping up production and currently has 52 scripted shows in the pipeline across Europe.

“Bad Tales,” which closely examines a small community of families living with their children in a suburb festering with toxic male sadism and adolescent rage, made a splash in...

At a surprise party for his daughter, a randy Italian homeowner studies a neighbor’s wife through the sliding glass door and describes all the ways he’d like to violate her. In the bathroom, his 14-year-old son sits with his best friend, studying the hardcore porn sites listed in the browsing history of Dad’s cellphone. A few days earlier and a couple doors down, a pregnant teen senses the prepubescent kid’s sexual curiosity and taunts him with a series of increasingly provocative acts. For example, when he offers her a cookie, she exposes a breast and gives a whole new meaning to “Got milk?”

Innocence is not a concept to be found in the D’Innocenzo Brothers’ cinematic oeuvre, which consists of two films so far: “Boys Cry” and “Bad Tales,” both of which forgo the notion of childhood as a state of uncorrupted naivete. Rather, in the Italian siblings’ deeply cynically,...

Four emotionally stifled suburban kids on the cusp of puberty struggle to adapt to the banality of their parents’ world in the very off-beat, slow-starting Bad Tales (Favolacce). If the D’Innocenzo brothers, Fabio and Damiano, were the new boys on the block when their realistic crime drama Boys Cry (La Terra dell’Abbastanza) bowed in the Berlin Panorama in 2018, they reach another level of maturity in this suburban noir. Though its roots are recognizably in Matteo Garrone’s bleak tales of cruelty from the Neapolitan hinterlands (the directors were collaborating screenwriters on Dogman), the Rome-set Bad Tales has its ...

Four emotionally stifled suburban kids on the cusp of puberty struggle to adapt to the banality of their parents’ world in the very off-beat, slow-starting Bad Tales (Favolacce). If the D’Innocenzo brothers, Fabio and Damiano, were the new boys on the block when their realistic crime drama Boys Cry (La Terra dell’Abbastanza) bowed in the Berlin Panorama in 2018, they reach another level of maturity in this suburban noir. Though its roots are recognizably in Matteo Garrone’s bleak tales of cruelty from the Neapolitan hinterlands (the directors were collaborating screenwriters on Dogman), the Rome-set Bad Tales has its ...

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.

The D’Innocenzo brothers’ highly anticipated second work will compete in the upcoming Berlinale, where their first work Boys Cry likewise made its debut in 2018. Elio Germano is leading the cast of Bad Tales, the highly anticipated second work by brothers Damiano and Fabio D'Innocenzo whose brilliant debut film Boys Cry received its baptism in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival 2018. Written by the two directors, the film is a dark tale falling somewhere between the works of Italo Calvino and Gianni Rodari. It tells a no-holds-barred story of the dynamics governing human relations within a community of families on the southern outskirts of Rome, where the silent and subtle sadism of fathers, the passivity of mothers and the rage of the young all bubble away beneath the surface, weaving a dark web of dramatic consequences. As the authors explain, it’s “a choral story set within a.

A comic book about a chameleon-like master thief done as a live-action movie, a reinvention of the Spaghetti Western and a manhunt thriller with a Hollywood A-list cast are among buzz titles by Italian directors in various stages expected to soon be hitting the international festival circuit and, more important, entering the global movie market. Besides a shift toward genre moviemaking, they reflect a more international mindset while remaining firmly rooted in the Italian cinema canon.

“Born To Be Murdered”

Luca Guadagnino is producing this English-language manhunt thriller directed by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino (“Antonia”), toplining John David Washington and Alicia Vikander as a couple vacationing in Greece who become enmeshed in a tragically violent conspiracy. Pic also boasts “Call Me by Your Name” lenser Sayombhu Mukdeeprom and editor Walter Fasano, as well as Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. In production.

“Bad Days”

Twins Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, who made a...

The Italian-language project is being developed by Giuseppe Saccà of Rome’s Pepito Produzioni.

German sales powerhouse The Match Factory has acquired international rights to the D’Innocenzo brothers’ Bad Tales (Favolacce), the directors’ follow-up to their Berlinale Panorama title Boys Cry.

The Italian-language project is being developed by Giuseppe Saccà of Rome’s Pepito Produzioni, who also produced Boys Cry, which was also sold by The Match Factory.

The new film is described as a dark fairytale set in a southern suburb of Rome, where a small community of families live with their adolescent children. It is set to shoot in July.

The Italian-language project is being developed by Giuseppe Saccà of Rome’s Pepito Produzioni.

German sales powerhouse The Match Factory has acquired international rights to the D’Innocenzo brothers’ Bad Tales (Favolacce), the directors’ follow-up to their Berlinale Panorama title Boys Cry.

The Italian-language project is being developed by Giuseppe Saccà of Rome’s Pepito Produzioni, who also produced Boys Cry, which was also sold by The Match Factory.

The new film is described as a dark fairytale set in a southern suburb of Rome, where a small community of families live with their adolescent children. It is set to shoot in July.

Italian actress Michela De Rossi has been cast in a “pivotal role” in “The Sopranos” prequel “The Many Saints of Newark” as the film begins production next week, an individual with knowledge of the project told TheWrap.

De Rossi joins Alessandro Nivola, Vera Farmiga, Ray Liotta, Jon Bernthal, Corey Stoll, Billy Magnussen, John Magaro and Michael Gandolfini in the ensemble drama set during in the Newark riots in the ’60s. She’ll play an “ambitious” Italian immigrant who comes to America to settle in Newark, New Jersey.

De Rossi is an up-and-coming Italian actress who made her cinematic debut in the 2018 film “Boys Cry,” a breakout at Berlinale that was directed by Fabio and Damiano D’Innocenzo. She’s never acted in the U.S., and her first trip to the States was to audition for the film.

Also Read: 'The Sopranos' Prequel Movie: Everything We Know So...

Exclusive: The Sopranos prequel The Many Saints Of Newark has set its final major lead role. Michela De Rossi, the Italian-born actress who made her debut in Boys Cry, has been set to join Alessandro Nivola, Vera Farmiga, Ray Liotta, Jon Bernthal, Corey Stoll, Billy Magnussen, John Magaro, Michael Gandolfini and the just-cast Leslie Odom Jr. in the ensemble drama for New Line. Production gets underway next week in New Jersey and New York.

Details have been scant on many of the big roles, but I’m told De Rossi will play an ambitious Italian immigrant who comes to America and settles in Newark. De Rossi has never acted in the U.S., and her first trip to the states was to audition for this role, which was highly sought after. The filmmakers sparked to a vivacity and authentic feel she brought to it. Boys Cry was a breakout at...

In today’s film news roundup, “Walking on Water” gets North American distribution, Abramorama acquires rights to “Family in Transition,” and the Cinema Italian Style film festival sets its opening night film.

Acquisitions

Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to “Walking on Water,” centered on installation artist Christo and his 2016 art piece “The Floating Piers,” Variety has learned exclusively.

The yellow walkway was mounted for 16 days during that summer, a 3-kilometer walkway that allowed visitors to safely walk across stretches of Italy’s Lake Iseo to experience the sensation of floating and walking on water. More than 1.2 million people walked on “The Floating Piers,” making it the most-visited art event of that year.

The documentary, directed by Andrey Paounov, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and will have its New York premiere on Nov. 10 at Doc NYC and a theatrical release in 2019.

Originally conceived with...

This year’s festival runs from October 11-14.

Miami Film Festival Gems will feature a line-up heavy on foreign-language Oscar submissions bookended by Colombia’s Birds Of Passage from Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra and Spain’s Oscar submission Champions by Javier Fesser.

Miami Dade College top brass announced the roster on Tuesday (18) ahead of this year’s festival, which runs from October 11-14.

The selection includes Nadine Labaki’s Lebanese submission Capernaum, Border by Ali Abbasi, which will fly the flag for Sweden, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Polish film Cold War, South Korea’s submission Burning by Chang-dong Lee, Asghar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows,...

The Miami Film Festival’s fall edition, called Gems, has unveiled its lineup including Colombia’s Oscar entry “Birds of Passage” as opening night selection and Spain’s Oscar submission “Champions” as closing night film.

Miami Dade College organizes the festival, which takes place Oct. 11-14 at the college’s Tower Theater Miami. The Miami Film Festival’s 36th edition will run March 1-10, 2019.

Spanish actress Barbara Lennie will accept the Precious Gem Award before the screening of her latest film, “Petra.” Cinematographer Diego Garcia, who shot Paul Dano’s directing debut “Wildlife,” will receive the Art of Light award before the Florida premiere of the film.

Films screening in the Spotlight Stage section are “El Angel,” “Animal,” “Ben is Back,” “Border,” “Burning,” “Capernaum,” “Cold War,” “Everybody Knows” and “Petra.”

The Discovery Stage section will screen “Boys Cry,” “Diamantino,” “Dry Martina,” “The Heiresses,” “Hopelessly Devout,” “Soufra,” “Wildlife” and “Woman at War.

Italian twins Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo who made a splash in Berlin with crimer “Boys Cry” are set to direct a TV series centered around a present-day exorcist produced by Cattleya, Italy’s prominent production shingle controlled by ITV.

“Boys Cry,” which explores Rome’s criminal underworld through the prism of two street kids who try to play with the big boys, has gone from Berlin to earning the D’Innocenzo brothers plenty of critical kudos. They recently won the best emerging director Silver Ribbon prize awarded by Italy’s film critics.

“They gave us a very powerful series concept,” Cattleya topper Riccardo Tozzi said about the show working-titled “Il Proprietario” in Italian, which translates as “The Owner.”

Tozzi said it will be “a deep series about evil and the necessity of evil” and pointed out that though one of the central characters is an exorcist “he’s totally...

Gomorrah comes to the Roman outskirts with a twist in the muscular Italian debut feature Boys Cry (La terra dell’abbastanza), from self-taught filmmaking twins Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo. After two best buddies without much hope for a future accidentally kill a pedestrian with their car, they end up becoming lowly hirelings for a local criminal clan. What sets this story of two smart-ass kids in the criminal underworld apart from many of its brethren is the brothers’ keen perception of the psychological and moral issues that inform the duo’s behavior, as they try to tame the pain of their transgression...

The Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama sidebar is now complete, bursting with 47 titles from 40 countries, and mixing documentary and features. Among the new additions today is Idris Elba’s directorial debut Yardie which just premiered at Sundance. Other selections announced include the Pedro Almodovar-produced Franco regime doc The Silence Of Others and Lemonade, produced by Romania’s Cristian Mungiu.

Also on deck are new works from Korea’s Kim Ki-duk, Human, Space, Time And Human; and Ursula Meier’s Shock Waves – Diary Of My Mind.

Wolfgang Fischer’s Styx will open Panorama Special on February 16. The nearly dialogue-free film film tells the story of a female doctor on a sailing holiday gone unexpectedly sour somewhere between Europe and Africa. The main program will open on the evening before with the previously announced River’s Edge from Isao Yukisada.

Below is the full...