25/03/2015 - Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders opens an edition that boasts a Sergio Leone retrospective

The eighth edition of the 8 ½ Festa do Cinema Italiano (Italian Cinema Celebration) kicks off in Lisbon today with the presentation of The Wonders [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alice Rohrwacher
interview: Tiziana Soudani
film profile], the film by director Alice Rohrwacher that made off with the Grand Jury Prize at the most recent Cannes Film Festival. The director and her sister, Alba Rohrwacher, who plays one of the lead characters, will be in attendance at the opening ceremony. Following tomorrow’s premiere, the movie will hit the commercial theatre circuit in April.

Alba Rohrwacher also stars in Hungry Hearts [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Saverio Costanzo
film profile], a drama by Saverio Costanzo about fatherhood in the modern age, which is part of the Panorama section.

8 ½ can boast five national premieres as well as a competition section that includes six recent titles from the Italian film scene: Black Souls [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Francesco Munzi
film profile] by Francesco Munzi, Short Skin [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Duccio Chiarini
film profile] by Duccio Chiarini, Quiet Bliss [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Edoardo Winspeare, Misunderstood [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Asia Argento, Le cose belle [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Agostino Ferrente and Giovanni Piperno, and Darker Than Midnight [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Sebastiano Riso.

This year, the gathering is also opening up to TV productions and is showing the entire Gomorrah series by Stefano Sollima, Francesca Comencini and Claudio Cupellini, based on the book of the same name by Roberto Saviano.

Another of the major assets of this edition is a retrospective dedicated to Sergio Leone and his inescapable spaghetti westerns; this will include the screening of a restored copy of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

On 2 April, The Invisible Boy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gabriele Salvatores
film profile] by Gabriele Salvatores will bring the celebration to a close in the capital, before extended versions of the event then head to the cities of Porto (9–12 April), Évora (15–18 April), Caldas da Raínha (25–27 April), Loulé (1-3 May) and Coimbra (5-7 May).

(Translated from Spanish)