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VENICE 2014 Italy

Five Italian titles at Venice Days

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- Ivano De Matteo and Felice Farina in competition, Rä di Martino, Masbedo and the omnibus film 9x10 Ninety among the special events

Five Italian titles at Venice Days
The Dinner by Ivano De Matteo (© Emanuela Scarpa)

Italy is well represented this year at Venice Days, the 11th edition of which is scheduled for Venice from 27 August to 6 September, with two titles in competition and three special events.

Among the 12 films in competition for the new Venice Days Award, and that’s not all (read the news), we have I nostri ragazzi [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ivano De Matteo
film profile
]
 by Ivano De Matteo and Patria by Felice Farina. The first, by the creator of Gli equilibristi [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(selected in Horizons at the 2012 Venice Festival), it stars Alessandro Gassman, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Luigi Lo Cascio and Barbora Bobulova. Produced by Rodeo Drive and Rai Cinema with the contribution of MiBACT (Italian distribution 01 Distribution, from 5 September – international sales Rai Com), is a family drama freely inspired by the book “The Dinner” by Herman Koch. It tells the tale of the delicate balance between two middle class brothers who are very different from each other – one an acclaimed lawyer, the other a busy paediatrician – and their respective wives, who meet once a month in a gourmet restaurant. The balance collapses when their respective children (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers and Jacopo Olmo Antinori) commit a crime. “We took the heart of the tale from Koch’s book to then focus the story on one question: what would I do if my preteen son were to commit a crime?” explained the director at the presentation of the Venice Days programme in Rome.

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Patria, on the other hand, is a Nina Film production with the contribution of MiBACT and the support of Film Commission Torino Piemonte (Italian distribution Istituto Luce Cinecittà). Based on the book of the same name by Enrico Deaglio, Felice Farina (The Physics of Water [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, Brakeless, Bidoni) it narrates, with a mix of fiction and real footage, thirty years of Italian history, from the kidnapping and assassination of Aldo Moro up to the present day, through the memories of a labourer, a trade unionist and a clerk who occupy the top of a tower while the factory they work in gets set to shut down because of the economic crisis. “It’s a kind of experiment on our memory”, said the author, “it plays on emotions and has an instinctive editing”. Starring in the movie are Francesco Pannofino, Roberto Citran and Carlo Gabardini.

Three of the four films present at the Venice Days special events are Italian. The omnibus movie 9x10 Ninety is an Istituto Luce Cinecittà production and has seen the participation of nine of the most esteemed Italian filmmakers: Marco Bonfanti, Claudio Giovannesi, Alina Marrazzi, Pietro Marcello and Sara Fgaier, Giovanni Piperno, Costanza Quatriglio, Paola Randi, Alice Rohrwacher and Roland Sejko. Each of them made a short ten minute film with images from the Archivio Luce, which has its 90th birthday this year. An album of varying, real and poetic narrations: from the first day of war to miracles, superstitions and dreams, including the status of women, sexuality, the meaning of a song and the Moon.

Another special event is The Show MAS Go On by video artist Rä di Martino, with Sandra Ceccarelli, Iaia Forte, Maia Sansa and Filippo Timi (Produzioni Illuminati). A mix of documentary, musical and movie quotes which serve to recount the spirit and energy of the historic magazzini popolari MAS in Piazza Vittorio, in Rome, born at the beginning of the last century as luxury stores, later transformed into a meeting place of a vast and colourful bunch of people (drag-queens, nannies, nuns), today risking closure.

The third special event, The Lack [+see also:
trailer
interview: Iacopo Bedogni (Masbedo)
film profile
]
by Masbedo (Nicolò Massazza and Jacopo Bedogni), an In Between Art Film production, with Vivo Film in co-production, which shows four variations on the theme of “failure” represented by six female characters, each one immersed in a primitive and silent context.

A pinch of Italy, finally, in the two short films from the Women’s Tales project, for the third consecutive year hosted at Venice Days and carried out with Miu Miu: the shorts on show this year are Spark and Light by So Yong Kim and Somebody by Miranda July.

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(Translated from Italian)

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