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RELEASES Italy

Most anticipated titles are European

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Less than a week before the Venice Film Festival, 11 films are being released in Italy on August 24.

Apart from Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko on the US health care system, the most anticipated titles are European. Starting with Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Cristian Mungiu
interview: Oleg Mutu
film profile
]
, which Lucky Red is distributing on 120 screens in over 70 cities as it looks to also reach multiplex audiences – unusual numbers and efforts for a niche cinema such as Romania’s.

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Romania also features in Tony Gatlif’s French production Transylvania [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, a gypsy women’s road movie that leads Asia Argento and Amira Casar to the pagan rituals of the Feast of Herod. The closing film of Cannes 2006 is being released by Lady Film , which distributed the director’s previous film, Exiles.

The second French film of the week is Le grand rôle, a dramatic comedy starring and directed by Steve Suissa. Made in 2004, the film’s delayed release marks the official entrance of the newly formed Iguana Film onto the Italian distribution market.

Also from 2004 is Prova a volare: all traces of the film, directed by photographer Lorenzo Cicconi Massi, were lost until the huge success of Riccardo Scamarcio (in one of his earliest performances) convinced Istituto Luce to unearth it – and in grand style, with over 200 prints.

Only one cinema in Rome, however, will screen Gabriele Albanesi’s Il bosco fuori, released by NeroFilm. The debut feature is a horror film, a genre rarely seen in Italian cinema as of late.

Arriving from the UK is Edgar Wright’s crowd-pleaser Hot Fuzz [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, a parody that reunites the team of Shaun of the Dead. The crime comedy-drama centres on a brisk-mannered cop transferred to the (not very) sleepy British countryside. It is being released by Universal, proving that Wright has not only won over the esteem of Quentin Tarantino and George Romero, but US studios as well.

Just like Germany’s Marcus Nispel, the successful commercials and music videos director behind the 2003 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, who has now helmed Pathfinder (20th Century Fox). The origins of the US production are, however, European as the film is a remake of Nils Gaup’s Norwegian film Ofelas (1987).

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(Translated from Italian)

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