03/12/2009

Italian cinema abounds in the 2010 lineups, if we go by the advance looks provided by distributors at the Cinema Professional Days winding up in Sorrento. Highlights of the coming season include new titles by Gabriele Muccino, Paolo Virzì, Stefano Incerti, Michele Placido, Pupi Avati, and Michelangelo Frammartino.

ANEC, the Italian exhibitors’ association, is all smiles, in fact, over the “diverse offerings of top-notch Italian films that we feel will also perform well at the box office”. However, ANEC president Paolo Protti admits that “we are concerned that the releases of these films are mostly concentrated over just a few months, particularly February and March. On Valentine’s Day alone four Italian titles are slated for release. So we do hope that both the distributors and the producers decide to change some of their release dates in order to guarantee all films the best possible results”.

Medusa Film, fresh from a very good year in 2009, presented its new Christmas movie by Leonardo Pieraccioni Io e Marilyn, which hits the theatres on December 18. For the occasion, Rai Trade announced it has signed a deal with Levante srl to distribute five Pieraccioni films internationally: The Prince and the Pirate, Suddenly Paradise, Ti amo in tutte le lingue del mondo, Una Moglie bellissima and Io e Marilyn, all up for grabs by international buyers and broadcasters.

Medusa’s lineup also includes La prima cosa bella by Paolo Virzì, starring Micaela Ramazzotti and Claudia Pandolfi; Il figlio più piccolo by Pupi Avati; La vita è una cosa meravigliosa by Enrico Vanzina; Tutto l’amore del mondo by Riccardo Grandi and Kiss Me Again by Gabriele Muccino, the sequel, ten years on, to his The Last Kiss. After several years in Los Angeles, in fact, Muccino is back with an all-Italian film. The producer, Domenico Procacci, drops one little tidbit: “The song selected for the end credits is by Jovanotti".

Universal Italia is sticking to its alliance with Cattleya, and its lineup features the comedy C'è chi dice no by Giambattista Avellino, starring Luca Argentero, Paolo Ruffini, and Paola Cortellesi (scheduled for an April 19 release); Una canzone per te, directed by Simone Paragnani, aimed at the youth market (June 4); La donna della mia vita by Luca Lucini, starring Luca Argentero and Alessandro Gassman (November 15); and Un altro mondo by Silvio Muccino (early 2011).

After the Christmas flick Christmas in Beverly Hills, with its late December release, Filmauro will have Giovanni Veronesi’s new film, Genitori e figli: agitare bene prima dell'uso hitting the screens (February 26), while shooting on Amici miei - Come tutto ebbe inizio, directed by Neri Parenti and produced by Filmauro, should start next April, with an eye to a February 2011 release. Filmauro president Aurelio De Laurentiis has announced its acquisition of the film rights to the Gormiti, for a picture to be directed by an American filmmaker with an American cast.

Two Italian films on the early 2010 lineup for Andrea Occhipinti’s Lucky Red: Gorbachev –The Cashier Who Liked Gambling by Stefano Incerti, starring Toni Servillo and set in a multiethnic Naples, and Aspettando Godard by Alessandro Aronadio, starring Lorenzo Balducci and Isabella Ragonese.

Lucky Red’s European titles include Brotherhood [+see also:
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Interview Nicolo Donato [IT]
interview: Nicolo Donato
film profile], Nicolo Donato’s debut film honoured at the Rome Film Festival; We Want Sex by Nigel Cole (Calendar Girls), starring Miranda Richardson, Bob Hoskins, and Sally Hawkins; Black Venus, the latest film by Abdel Kechiche (Couscous [+see also:
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interview: Hafsia Herzi
film profile], kudoed at the Venice Film Festival two years ago), which was inspired by the true story of a South African girl who was trotted around Europe as a circus freak in the 19th century, the public flocking to see her astonishing anatomy. BR>
On the interesting 2010 programme for Cinecittà Luce, titles include Schemes of Affection by Dodo Fiori; a German-Polish co-production, A Woman in Berlin by Max Faerberboeck; Il fodero by Paola Livia Randi, starring Peppe Servillo; Passione, John Turturro’s musical drawing on traditional Neapolitan music; Le quattro volte by Michelangelo Frammartino; Lourdes [+see also:
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interview: Jessica Hausner
film profile] by Jessica Hausner, which competed at the most recent Venice Film Festival; Venti sigarette by Aureliano Amadei, starring Carolina Crescentini, about the bomb assault on the Italian military base in Nassiriya; and the animated documentary L’arte della felicità.