09/09/2003

A very large selection of Italian films are being featured at the 28th edition of the Toronto Film Festival (September 4-13). After the success he had last year with My Mother’s Smile, Marco Bellocchio has once again packed his bags and headed off to Canada, this time to present Good Morning, Night [+see also:
trailer
interview: Marco Bellocchio, director …
film profile]. The film, which has just won an award for its screenplay at Venice, has been selected to be shown in the prestigious Gala section alongside works by Robert Altman, Lars von Trier, Margarethe von Trotta, Jane Campion, Carl Franklin and Denys Arcand.

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Also fresh from the 60th Venice Film Festival there’s Secret File, the film by Paolo Benvenuti about the massacre at Portella della Ginestra in Sicily. And a variety of 2003 Italian blockbusters are scattered through the other sections of TIFF: Facing Window by Ferzan Ozpetek, Remember Me by Gabriele Muccino, I’m Not Scared by Gabriele Salvatores, A Heart Elsewhere by Pupi Avati (to whom the festival is also dedicating a panel) and The Best of Youth by Marco Tullio Giordana.
Nanni Moretti will be presenting The Last Customer, his short film about New York post September 11 that has already been shown at Cannes. There are also 4 Italian co-productions at TIFF: A Talking Picture by Manoel De Oliveira and Crimson Gold by Jafar Panahi, both under the Mikado label, The Tulse Luper Suitcases. Part III. Antwerp, the second part of the Peter Greenaway project co-produced by Gam Film and Vodka Lemon, the third film by the Armenian director Hiner Saleem made by Sinora in partnership with France, Switzerland and Armenia.
The Toronto International Film Festival, led by Piers Handling, is organised by a staff of 2,300 people, including 1,700 volunteers and it has a budget of $12m. Last year, half a million people attended the event.

(Translated from Italian)