30/07/2009

As many had already predicted, four Italian films, of the 24 in Official Competition, will vie for the Golden Lion at this year's Venice Film Festival .

Alongside the already announced opening film, Giuseppe Tornatore's historical epic Baaria [+see also:
film review
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film profile], produced by Medusa [+see also:
film review
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film profile], will be Michele Placido's Il Grande Sogno [+see also:
film review
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film profile] (to be released by Medusa on September 11 ), Francesca Comencini's Lo Spazio Bianco [+see also:
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film profile] (RAI Cinema) and Giuseppe Capotondi's La Doppia Ora [+see also:
film review
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interview: Giuseppe Capotondi
film profile] (whose release, also through Medusa, is scheduled for November 6).

Like Tornatore, who recounts his native Bagheria, Placido is also bringing to screens a personal story, a triangle between a police officer (Riccardo Scamarcio), a well-off student (Jasmine Trinca) and the leader of the students' movement (Luca Argentero) during the 1968 demonstrations. Comencini's film is based on the Valeria Parrella novel, about a 40-something (Margherita Buy) in her sixth month of pregnancy and the ensuing "limbo", while Capotondi's debut thriller sees Filippo Timi and Ksenia Rappoport play a former cop and Slovenian maid, respectively, who begin a relationship after a speed date, until he dies.

There are also over 20 Italian films spread out among the various other sections of the Festival, beginning with Horizons, which will present Luca Guadagnino's Io Sono l’Amore (Mikado), Vincenzo Terracciano's Tris di Donne & Abiti Nuziali (RAI Cinema) Marco Simon Puccioni's documentary Il Colore delle Parole. Horizons Events will feature the documentaries Deserto Rosa: Luigi Ghiri by Elisabetta Sgarbi, Armando Testa: Povero Ma Moderno by Pappi Corsicato and Via della Croce by Serena Nono.

The sidebar Cinema of the Present will screen Abel Ferrara's Napoli Napoli Napoli, Francesco Maselli's Le ombre rosse and the documentaries L’Oro di Cuba by Giuliano Montaldo and Prove per una Tragedia Siciliana by Roman Paska and John Turturro.

The new section Controcampo Italiano highlights 10 films: Marco Filiberti's Il Compleanno, Valerio Mieli's Dieci Inverni, Susanna Nicchiarelli's Cosmonauta and the documentaries Poeti by Toni D’Angelo, Negli Occhi by Francesco Del Grosso and Daniele Anzellotti, Hollywood sul Tevere by Marco Spagnoli, Il Piccolo by Maurizio Zaccaro, Giuseppe De Santis by Carlo Lizzani (Eventi), and Giulio Questi's Lola and Tinto Brass's Hotel Courbet in Retrospettiva Eventi.