The 12th Festival of Italian Cinema, whose programming includes more than 50 films, a complete retrospective of the director Nanni Moretti, concerts and musical appetizers, starts today in Lisbon, followed later to other cities.
“We have almost 50 recent Italian films, a great retrospective on Nanni Moretti, concerts of classical music, musical and gastronomic gatherings. It’s a very interesting program, between short films, documentaries and sessions dedicated to great Italian art“, said the director of the Festa of the Italian Cinema, Stefano Savio.
The opening film of the 12th edition, “Notti Magiche” by Paolo Virzì, is shown tonight, in the national anthem, at Cinema São Jorge. According to Stefano Savio, it is “a comedy, developed in the 1990s, an almost time of passage of witness between great authors of Italian cinema, who became famous around the world, and a new wave of young authors “.
The curator includes the opening film on the list of “some of the latest hits from the last season in Italy” which will be shown at the festival, which also includes “Il primo re” by Matteo Rovere, “about the almost founding myth of Rome, the story of Rómulo and Remo, “and Claudio Giovannesi’s most decent film,” La Paranza dei bambini “(” Piranhas – The Boys of the Camorra “).
“La Paranza dei bambini,” based on the first novel by the journalist Roberto Saviano (author of “Gomorra”, released in 2006 on the Neapolitan Mafia), won the best film prize in Berlin at the Berlin Film Festival in February.
The program also includes, among others, the most recent films by Daniele Luchetti, “Io sono tempesta” by Stefano Mordini, “Il testimony invisible“, and by Paolo Sorrentino, “Loro 1” and “Loro 2”.
In the competitive section of the festival, dedicated to the first and second works, eight films are included.
In the context of the great classics of Italian cinema, there will be a retrospective, in collaboration with the Cinemateca Portuguesa, dedicated to the work of Nanni Moretti, which includes unpublished works, namely short films and documentaries among which the anthesis “Santiago, Italy” documentary in the 1970s, following the coup d’etat of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile, when the Italian embassy in Santiago opened its doors to hundreds of asylum seekers.
At the closing session, on April 14 at São Jorge, “Euforia“, the most recent work of Valeria Golino, will be shown.
The Festival of the Italian Cinema is divided, in Lisbon, between Cinema São Jorge, the Cinemateca Portuguesa and the cinemas UCI El Corte Ingles and, in addition to the screening of films, includes a series of side events, of which Stefano Savio highlights the concert “4 Canções Italianas” by Pedro Teixeira da Silva, composed of four songs inspired by the poems of the Italians Giacomo Leopardi and Giosuè Carducci.
Until April 14 there will also be cinema sessions and workshops dedicated to the young, where will be presented “Leo Da Vinci: missione Monna Lisa“, an animated film by Sergio Manfio.
Throughout the party, viewers are invited to “see concerts of Italian musicians and try a real Italian appetizer“.
The list of guests in this edition includes the director and actor Daniele Luchetti, director Roberto Andò, actor Luca Marinelli, director Alberto Fasulo, actor and director Phaim Bhuiyan, director Marco Proserpio and director, producer and writer Leonardo Guerra Seragnoli .
In addition to Lisbon, the Italian Film Festival takes place in 18 other Portuguese locations: Coimbra (April 9-11), Almada (April 10-13), Porto (April 10-14), Setúbal (April 11-14) ), Alverca do Ribatejo (12 and 13 April), Penafiel (13 and 14 April), Moscavide (13 and 14 April), Aveiro (15 and 16 April), Viseu (May 1 and 3), Abrantes (May 01, 08 and 15), Beja (07 to 09 May), Caldas da Rainha (08 to 10 May), Évora (14 to 17 May), Tomar (14 to 18 May), Loulé 23 to 26 May), Funchal, Angra do Heroísmo and Santa Cruz da Graciosa still with dates to be announced.
Later, according to Stefano Savio, the party will pass through Angola, Mozambique and Brazil.
The complete schedule, times and locations can be found at www.festadocinemaitaliano.com
