LA DOLCE VITA DOWNTOWN ITALY IN FINE FORM AT THE 38th MWFF

Wednesday August 13, 2022

Montreal, August 12, 2022 —  As always the Montreal World Film Festival has a bumper crop of Italian films to show, this year more than ever. Starting with the president of the jury, Sergio Castellitto, and continuing through various sections of the Festival, lovers of Italian cinema will have plenty to celebrate.

            Thirteen films, produced or co-produced by Italy, are on show and Pupi Avati will be on hand for the premiere of his new film along with a large delegation of Italian film people.

 

World Competition

            UN RAGAZZO D’ORO (A Golden Boy), directed by Pupi Avati. Davide's father, Ettore, was a scriptwriter of B-grade movies based on bad jokes. Davide is an advertising copywriter whose dream is to write something of value. Father and son never understood each other, and probably never really talked. When Ettore dies in a suspicious car accident -- seemingly a suicide -- Davide’s life takes an unexpected turn. He leaves Milan, his job, his girlfriend Silvia, and moves in with his mother in Rome. In his mother's house his father’s presence, frustrations, secret dreams can still be felt. Ettore’s greatest dream: Ludovica (Sharon Stone), a radiant woman, a publisher who was interested in publishing the autobiographical book Ettore wanted to write. Davide, intrigued by the idea of finally getting to know his father, looks for this mysterious book in his father’s papers but he finds nothing. Frustrated but intrigued, he decides to write the book himself.  

            AMANET (The Last Wish), by Namik Ajazi, an Albanian-Italian co-production, is set in Albania in the 1980s. Life in the country has turned into a real hell and Enver Hoxha’s paranoia reaches its peak as he gets rid of his closest “friends” one after the other. One of them is Mentor, head of the Secret Service. Sensing the danger Mentor locks himself night after night in a secret room of his house and starts recording the events he was involved in from the beginning of the Communist regime. He gives the tapes to his son, who escapes to Italy.
            THE WRONG STORY (Una storia sbagliata), by Gianluca Maria Tavarelli, is set in Gela, a town on the southern coast of Sicily, where a soldier, Roberto, and a nurse, Stefania, are deeply in love. They decide to get married. Their life unfolds normally until Roberto dies from a bomb in Iraq. Devastated, Stefania decides to visit the site to figure out what really happened. Expecting to find enemies, she finds instead people who are asking the same social and political questions that are being posed in the west, about health, the environment, poverty. Her vision of the world changes. So does her mission in life.

 

Focus on World Cinema

            THE FIFTH WHEEL (L’ultima ruotta del carro), by Giovanni Veronesi. Ernesto Marchetti is an everyday hero, a humble house mover. As a boy, his father explained the facts of life for someone in his social and economic circumstances: "You are a fifth wheel". Upholsterer, nursery school cook, mover, chauffeur, film extra... the only way to get ahead in life for a fifth wheel is to keep moving. And through Ernesto we are cast a cynical and watchful gaze on the vices and virtues of Italy and Italians, a journey through contemporary Italy that lasts for four decades.
            TIR, by Alberto Fasulo. Travelling around European roads, Branko has turned into a truck driver who is farther away from everything and everyone, living on his own in his cabin while trying to give his family a better life. Day and night, for long weeks, becoming one with his truck, he now earns three times his wage as a teacher, but everything has a price, even though sometimes it is not measurable in money.

            PERFIDIA, by Bonifacio Angius. After his wife dies, Peppino finds himself faced with the problem of his son Angelo who, despite being 35 years old, still lives at home, without a job or a steady girlfriend.

            THE MAFIA KILLS ONLY IN SUMMER (La mafia uccide solo d’estate), by Pierfrancesco Diliberto aka Pif, brings us back to Sicily. The day the well-known Mafioso Vito Ciancimino is elected mayor of Palermo is also the day Arturo is born, and this coincidence will have many more consequences on his life than one would think. In fact, the boy has two obsessions: his tormented love for Flora, who shares a desk with him in class; and the frightening connections between his city and the Mafia.
            AND THERE WAS EVENING AND THERE WAS MORNING (E fu sera, e fu mattina), by Emanuele Caruso, is set in Avila, where, in the town’s main square, everybody is celebrating the feast of Saint Eurosia, protector of earth's harvest. But something is also happening in the village bar, where all eyes are glued to the television set...
            THE SCULPTURE (La scultura), by Mauro John Capece. Moses is a talented sculptor totally committed to his art who struggles to eke out a living. He decides to rent a room to Korinne, a beautiful woman who works as an escort and is thoroughly convinced that the primary goals of life are easy money and external beauty. The meeting between Moses and Korinne leads to a love story that will change their lives forever.

            CLOSER TO THE MOON by Nae Caranfil, is a Romania-USA-Italy-Poland co-production set in 1959 telling the true story of a Romanian police officer who teams up with a small crew of old friends from the World War II Resistance to pull off a heist by convincing everyone at the scene of the crime that they are only filming a movie.

           

            Plus two short films: CORAL, by Giacomo Martelli, in which Pio, a Samoan fisherman, one day ventures into an off-limits lagoon and is faced with a moral dilemma by his discovery; and I KNOW YOU by Colin Gerrard and Simone Gallorini, which shows how in a game of confidence, it doesn't matter who you are, it's who they think you are.

           

World Documentaries

            HAPPY TO BE DIFFERENT (Felice chi è diverso), by Gianni Amelio, guides us through a secret Italy, its homosexual world before the 1980s, when the first attempts at "gay liberation" began to meet success. The film documents those who experienced the burden of being different,  people, now elderly, who remember how they lived this situation under Fascism and then in the Second World War, when a veil of silence was drawn over the topic, and people lived in fear and repression.       

            The Montreal World Film Festival runs from August 21 to September 1. Coupon booklets and individual tickets are available August 16 to 21, from noon to 7 pm, at the Cinéma Imperial and the Cinéma du Quartier Latin  As well, festivalgoers may purchase their tickets through the Admission network beginning August 22.

 

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Information:     Lison Lescarbeau

                        [email protected]

                       (514) 526-5046


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