24/07/2007

Five Italian films – three features and two documentaries – will screen in Venice Days, a fact that, according to the section’s delegate general Fabio Ferzetti, marks a “reawakening of our cinema”.

Sabina Guzzanti was the special event of Venice Days 2005 withViva Zapatero! [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and returns this year with Sympathy for the Lobster, produced by Fandango (which will release it September 7). The mockumentary reunites Pierfrancesco Loche, Cinzia Leone, Antonello Fassari – the comedians of Avanzi, the satirical television programme that launched her career – in Sardinia, in an attempt to help lobster fishermen and ask whether it is truly possible to change the world.

Produced by Pupkin Production and I.T.C. Movie with a contribution from the Ministry of Culture (MiBAC), Non pensarci [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Gianni Zanasi is a generational comedy about a dogged but failed 40 year-old rocker (Valerio Mastandrea), who returns to his hometown after having sought his fortune in the big city.

An atypical director, Salvatore Maira returns to feature filmmaking nine years after Amor nello specchio. His Valzer is a technical and artistic challenge that in a single, 90-minute sequence recounts the corruption in Italy today. The cast of the experimental melodrama, produced by Home Production, includes Maurizio Micheli and Valeria Solarino.

Besides filmmakers, Venice Days also includes two Italian actors that divide their time between Rome and Paris: Stefano Accorsi features in Emmanuel Mouret’s Un baiser, s’il vous plaît! [+see also:
trailer
film profile], while Adriana Asti plays an important role in Frédéric Fisbach’s La pluie des prunes.

Rounding out the selection are documentary portraits of two protagonists of Italian culture: with Buongiorno Culini. Vita e opere di Luciano Bianciardi Massimo Coppola and Alberto Piccinini continue the rediscovery of the great Tuscan writer while Francesca Del Sette dedicates Viaggio in corso nel cinema di Carlo Lizzani to the Roman director, who in La vita agra brought Bianciardi’s most famous novel to the big screen.

(Translated from Italian)