10/11/2006

This weekend offers three highly interesting European titles that will share Italian screens with Clint Eastwood’s much-anticipated Flags of Our Fathers (distributed by Warner Bros).

Cineuropa readers are invited to see our interview with this year’s Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or-winning director Ken Loach, as well as his producer, of The Wind That Shakes the Barley [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ken Loach
interview: Rebecca O’Brien
film profile] (released in Italy by BIM) in our Focus.

Another film that participated in the prestigious French festival is local title The Family Friend by Paolo Sorrentino, a grotesque comedy starring Giacomo Rizzo, Laura Chiatti and Fabrizio Bentivoglio, distributed by Medusa Film in a new version cut by six minutes (see article on director’s decision).

The third film out today is yet another Cannes title: Michel Ocelot’s animated French film Azur and Asmar [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], distributed by Lucky Red, which enchanted a theatre of 250 children during its screening in the Directors’ Fortnight (see Cannes coverage).

Tonight also marks the beginning of a series of special screenings in Rome, at Nanni Moretti's Nuovo Sacher cinema, of Agostino Ferrente's documentary L'orchestra di Piazza Vittorio (lit. "The Piazza Vittoria Orchestra"). Members of the extraordinary multi-cultural band, the subject of the film, will perform daily after the 9 pm screenings.

(Translated from Italian)