News

With over six decades of an illustrious filmmaking career, Marco Bellocchio’s latest feature, Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara, will be coming U.S. theaters later this month from Cohen Media Group. A story once in the hands of Steven Spielberg to adapt, the 84-year-old Italian director’s latest work follows Edgardo Mortara, a seven-year-old Jewish boy who was taken from his family in Bologna to be raised Catholic in the actual arms of Pope Pius IX. Ahead of the May 24 release, we’re pleased to exclusively announce NYC’s Quad Cinema will be presenting the retrospective “Marco Bellocchio’s Film of Revolution,” taking place May 17-23.

See the lineup below.

Fists in the Pocket In the Name of the Father A Leap in the Dark Enrico IV Devil in the Flesh Good Morning, Night Marx Can Wait

Bellocchio also shared a personal statement ahead of the retrospective, which one can read below.

Tom Hollander and Niamh Algar are set to lead “Iris,” a new Sky Original drama from “Luther” creator Neil Cross. It is a Sky Studios and Fremantle co-production.

“‘Iris’ is a sun-drenched chase thriller about a rootless and enigmatic genius, Iris Nixon who steals a code from charming philanthropist Cameron McIntyre and goes on the run,” reads the logline. “Armed only with her lethal intelligence and chameleonic charm, the clock is ticking for her to work out what the code could unleash before she is found.”

Algar (“Mary & George”) stars as Nixon, a social media manager and puzzle addict who spends her free time solving complex riddles. When she stumbles across a post online about a highly secretive code, she puts herself forward to try and crack it – leading her straight to Cameron McIntyre (Hollander). But all is not as it seems and — realizing she has unwittingly unlocked a powerful...

Niamh Algar (Mary & George) and Tom Hollander (Feud: Capote vs. The Swans) are leading a Sky thriller series about a code-breaking genius from Luther creator Neil Cross.

Described by its creator as “unapologetically exciting,” Iris will start shooting later this month in Sardinia and follow the titular character, a rootless and enigmatic genius who steals a code from charming philanthropist Cameron McIntyre (Hollander) and goes on the run. Armed only with her lethal intelligence and chameleonic charm, the clock is ticking for her to work out what the code could unleash before she is found.

Joining the cast alongside Algar and Hollander are newcomer Meréana Tomlinson (The Trials), Sacha Dhawan, Maya Sansa, Peter Sullivan and Debi Mazar (Younger, Entourage).

Algar is well known to Sky viewers having recently appeared as Sandie in period drama Mary & George. Hollander...

Niamh Algar and Tom Hollander will lead the cast for Iris, a new Sky original thriller series that will begin filming this month in Sardinia.

Algar, of Mary & George and The Virtues, and Hollander (The White Lotus, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans), will lead the cast of what is described as a “sun-drenched chase thriller.”

The eight-episode series follows “a rootless but enigmatic genius, Iris Nixon (Algar) who steals a code from a charming philanthropist (Hollander) before vanishing.” A countdown to her capture begins as she attempts to find out just what the code could unleash.

Luther creator Neil Cross will serve as writer, creator and showrunner, while and Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul director Terry McDonough will be the lead director.

“All I wanted to do was to make a show I wanted to watch,” Cross said of the Sky Studios and Fremantle co-production. “‘Iris’ is an unapologetically exciting,...

Marco Bellocchio has ruffled some feathers over the years – starting with his feature debut “Fists in the Pocket.”

“I do remember that people were shocked about me making a film, in Italy, about a son killing his mother. They were surprised and I don’t know why. I thought it was a good idea – from a dramatic point of view,” he said at International Film Festival Rotterdam during a talk with festival director Vanja Kaludjercic.

While his colleague Bernardo Bertolucci found himself in even bigger trouble – “They wanted to burn the negative of ‘The Last Tango in Paris,’ which was absurd! I had issues, but not as big as this one” – “Fists in the Pocket” still angered many. Including Luis Buñuel.

“He is perceived as this great surrealist, a revolutionary, but he was a conservative moralist. He couldn’t believe this angry young man was so bitter against his mother.

Most films ask nothing of you. You simply press play and watch the story unfold, gleaning context as the filmmaker colors in their narrative. But the occasional movie demands prerequisites to appreciate. Think: Dušan Makavejev’s Man Is Not a Bird, or last year’s competition title Petrov’s Flu, Kirill Serebrennikov’s mind-numbing swan dive into the socio-political climate of post-Soviet Russia whose commentary nearly requires a Ph.D. to unpack. Marco Bellocchio’s Exterior Night hovers somewhere in-between.

It would help if the historical thriller came with the equivalent of a summer reading list, but there’s enough explanation to clue you in if you’re not brushed up on your 1970s Italian politics. Perhaps more important that the story is easy to get wrapped up in, a six-episode miniseries that feels like a brisk five-and-a-half hours. No doubt it will be richer the more you know, but Bellocchio––with co-writers Stefano Bises,...

Italian director, screenwriter and producer Marco Bellocchio has opened up about his career and upcoming projects during a masterclass at the 53rd edition of Visions du Réel, where he received an honorary award.

The 82-year-old master is guest of honor at the documentary film festival, which includes a retrospective of a dozen of his works and a screening of his latest film, “Marx Can Wait,” a documentary about his twin brother Camilo’s suicide in December 1968.

Featuring footage filmed during a family get-together, personal archive material and clips from his films, it is an intimate and poignant documentary that explores how his brother’s death deeply influenced Bellocchio’s work over the decades.

At the time, Bellocchio explained, “the revolution of ’68 was underway, there were protests and riots, and I said to myself ‘I have to do something.’ So in September, together with friends who had founded the Maoist movement,...

Marco Bellocchio’s Cannes competition entry “The Traitor,” which follows the first high-ranking member of Cosa Nostra to break the Sicilian Mafia’s oath of silence, is Italy’s candidate for the Oscar for international feature film.

The drama, which Sony Pictures Classics will release in the U.S., was selected out of a roster of five titles by a committee convened by the Italian motion picture association, Anica.

The other top contender was Pietro Marcello’s “Martin Eden,” which recently won prizes in Venice and Toronto and has been acquired for the U.S. by Kino Lorber.

In “The Traitor,” Pierfrancesco Favino stars as Tommaso Buscetta, who in 1984 decided to start cooperating with Italian and, later, American prosecutors after a war within Cosa Nostra caused the killing of members of his family. He turned against the Corleonesi faction in the first major betrayal within Cosa Nostra’s senior ranks.

For decades Marco Bellocchio has been making films dealing with important moments of Italian history, most successfully with Good Morning, Night, his look at the Aldo Moro kidnapping by the Red Brigade, and Vincere, about Mussolini. He’s back in Cannes with a film in competition, this time looking at the maxi Mafia trials of the 1990s, which led to a slew of convictions, in part thanks to the traitor of the title, ex-Cosa Nostra ‘soldier’ turned state witness Tommaso Buscetta.

Buscetta is played by the extremely watchable Pierfrancesco Favino, whose portrayal of this don is both highly credible and somewhat disturbing. The latter is not due to Favino’s performance, which is one of his best, but to the director’s choice to depict Buscetta as a man of honour. Instances of Buscetta’s past are glimpsed throughout the film, but there is little evidence of what this man...

ROME -- La Meglio Gioventu, Marco Tullio Giordana's drama about the lives of two Roman brothers through the years 1966-2000, was the big winner at Italy's 59th Nastri d'Argento (Silver Ribbon) awards Tuesday. A RAI Cinema co-production, Gioventu won the prizes for best director, producer, screenplay, actress, actor, live take and editing. Gioventu has been a boxoffice success in Italy and has received rave reviews in Italian newspapers. The best actress prize was awarded to the film's entire female cast, while the best actor award went to its male cast on equal merit with actor Roberto Herlitzka (Buongiorno Notte).

American Vantage Media's indie film banner Wellspring continued to acquire product Tuesday, snapping up domestic rights to Marco Bellocchio's Good Morning, Night. The deal comes on the heels of Wellspring negotiating to acquire U.S. rights to Cedric Kahn's Red Lights (HR 3/1). Both titles came from the Paris-based sales outfit Celluloid Dreams. Wellspring will release Lights theatrically in the United States in the summer and Morning later this year.

ROME -- The organizers of Italy's biggest film awards ceremony, the Nastri d'Argento, have unveiled their 2004 nominations a few weeks earlier than in the past with an eye to extending the life of Italian movies at the boxoffice and help make up for last year's poor sales. Marco Bellocchio for Buongiorno, Notte (Good Morning, Night), Bernardo Bertolucci forThe Dreamers, Daniele Cipri and Franco Moresco for Il Ritorno di Cagliostro (The Return of Cagliostro), Marco Tullio Giordana for La Meglio Gioventu (The Best Youth), Ermanno Olmi for Cantandp Dietro I Paraventi (Singing Behind the Windscreen), and Paolo Virzi for Caterina Va in Citta (Caterina Goes Into Town) were nominated for the best Italian movie director award.