Organized by Cinecittà, the French Institute in London and The Italian Cultural Institute, this audience favorite annual film festival highlights the best Italian cinema from the past year.
Audiences in Old Foggy will soon get the chance to view the best of Italian cinema, in their own backyard, so to speak. This year’s edition, which returns to the French Institute’s Ciné Lumière in South Kensington, will run from 20 to 24 March 2024.
During those five days, ten new releases and one classic film will be screened, all curated by Adrian Wootton OBE, giving audiences the chance to catch the cutting edge of Italian cinema. In fact, several films will see their UK premiere as part of the festival, and a few of them will feature Q&As with the filmmakers, following their screening.
Adrian Wootton OBE, the CEO of Film London & British Film Commission and curator of series, said: “Showcasing the very best in contemporary Italian filmmaking from established and emerging talent this year’s line-up of Cinema Made In Italy is a diverse, exciting and distinctive selection of films. I am delighted to curate and host the 14th edition of this unique event and to be presenting this fantastic group of films and their makers to UK audiences.”
Among the films screened this year there will be the London premiere of Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera, starring Josh O’Connor, Carol Duarte, Alba Rohrwacher, and Isabella Rossellini. The film world premiered to glowing reviews in Cannes, in May of 2023 and follows Arthur as he challenges the invisible, searches everywhere, goes inside the earth, in search of the door to the afterlife to find the woman he loved, and lost — Beniamina. La Chimera will close the festival on the 24th of March.
Another UK premiere is last year’s Venice opening film Comandante by Neapolitan auteur Edoardo De Angelis. The film stars Pierfrancesco Favino as Salvatore Todaro, the man in command of the submarine Cappellini of the Italian Royal Navy. Based on the true story of the Battle of the Atlantic, when the Italian submarine Comandante Cappellini sunk the Belgian ship Kabalo, and Cappellini's commander Todaro decided to disobey orders and rescue the Kabalo's crew, thus forcing him and his crew to navigate on the surface for three days — making the ship an easy target for enemies. The screening, which will kick off the festival on March 20th, will be followed by a Q&A with director Edoardo De Angelis.
Another highlight is Paola Cortellesi’s There Is Still Tomorrow, a smash hit in Italy where it was the highest-grossing film of the year, surprisingly beating global box office juggernaut Barbie. The screening on the 23rd evening will be followed by a Q&A with director Paola Cortellesi.
Tommaso Santambrogio’s debut feature Oceans Are The Real Continents, which world premiered in the Giornate degli autori line-up in Venice is a timely film telling three separate stories set in present-day Cuba. The film feels like a cinematic painting in black and white and the screening on the 21st afternoon will be followed by a Q&A with director Tommaso Santambrogio.
Pictured in the header above and a film on my must-watch list is Ginevra Elkann’s I Told You So, a star-studded intertwining narrative set during a heatwave in Rome and starring Valeria Golino, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Greta Scacchi, and Danny Huston. The screening on the 23rd evening will be followed by a Q&A with director Ginevra Elkann, who is not a stranger to being the center of media’s attention because of her illustrious background. Her own cinematic career started when she assisted Bernardo Bertolucci on the set of his 1998 film L’Assedio, as well as being the video assistant on Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley in 1999.
This year’s family film at Cinema Made in Italy is Chicken For Linda! which won the Cristal Award, the top prize at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, directed by Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach. The annual screening of a classic from Italian cinema is a fully restored 4K version of Luchino Visconti’s 1951 Bellissima, which pulls no punches when it comes to Visconti’s view of women, and particularly Italian women.
Nicola Maccanico, the CEO of Cinecittà added: “Comedy, Drama, Noir, Animation: all the colors of Italian Cinema are reflected in the program of Cinema Made In Italy 2024. This year’s edition is going to be a real surprise package, with 50% of the festival’s films directed by women, 30% being first features and, last but not least, the most talked about film of the year in Italy, There Is Still Tomorrow. We wish our London audience another memorable cinematic experience!”
For the complete line up, check out the Cinema Made in Italy section on the Ciné Lumière website. That’s where you’ll also be able to purchase tickets.
Top image courtesy of the festival, used with permission.