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FESTIVALS Italy

Locarno presents Bondi and Baricco’s debuts

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Besides tributes to jury members Corso Salani and Paolo Sorrentino, and the retrospective on Nanni Moretti (which includes all his films as director, as well as several titles he produced or starred in), there will be over 20 Italian films at this year’s Locarno Film Festival (August 6-16), four of which have been selected in the three main sections.

Screening in competition will be Mar Nero [+see also:
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by debut filmmaker Federico Bondi. Produced by Film Kairós – along with RAI Cinema, and with financing from the Paris-based Manigolda Film and Bucharest’s HI Film – and shot in Florence and at the mouth of the Danube, it uses poetic overtones to tell the story of an elderly widow and her Romanian caretaker.

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Stars Ilaria Occhini and Dorotheea Petre (who won Cannes for her role in The Way I Spent the End of the World [+see also:
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, and was also seen in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [+see also:
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interview: Cristian Mungiu
interview: Oleg Mutu
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) are flanked by the equally wonderful Maia Morgenstern.

The Piazza Grande will screen Lezione 21 [+see also:
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, the directorial debut of writer Alessandro Baricco. Borrowing from his novel City the character of professor Mondrian Kilroy (John Hurt, once again playing an academic after the recent The Oxford Murders [+see also:
film review
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interview: Álex de la Iglesia
interview: Gerardo Herrero and Mariela…
film profile
]
), the story investigates the genesis of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Suspended between dream and reality, the past and the present, the film (written by the director and shot in English with an international cast that includes Noah Taylor and Leonor Watling) is a philosophical fable on art. Produced by Fandango with the UK’s Potboiler Productions, in collaboration with RAI Cinema, it will be released domestically by 01 Distribution.

Filmmakers of the Present will present Beket by independent filmmaker Davide Manuli (who also produced with his Shooting Hope Production, along with Blue Film). Shot in three weeks on a very low budget, the film is a highly personal work that drags its characters (and its audiences) into an unstable and absurd “no man’s land” made of actors such as Fabrizio Gifuni and Paolo Rossi.

The section will also include Bruno Oliviero’s Napoli Piazza Municipio (produced by Indigo Film), a medium-length documentary on a symbolic place in the city that is a metaphor for an entire society.

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(Translated from Italian)

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