Three Italian Films at the Palm Springs International Film Festival

The 27th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival is underway and will run through 11 January. Three Italian films are featured in this year's program: "Mia Madre" by Nanni Moretti, "Il Viaggio" by Adriano Valerio and "The Other Side" by Roberto Minervini. For information about "Mia Madre", click here to read our original post. The screenings for "Mia Madre" in Palm Springs are already sold out. The descriptions of the following two films are from the festival's website.

Il Viaggio
(Banat)
Director: Adriano Valerio

A random encounter with a stranger can sometimes set our lives on a different path. And so it is with Ivo and Clara. As Clara arrives unannounced in Ivo’s apartment one afternoon. He is moving out and she is moving in. Only he was supposed to have left days ago for a job in Romania. She has an easy disposition (and a secret), so they chat while he packs his remaining things, and when it becomes clear that he’s dragging his cold feet, they go for a walk... And walk and walk and chat and chat. You think this is leading somewhere and maybe it is – but maybe not where you think. Ivo leaves and Clara finds herself wanting to reconnect. After weeks or perhaps months she packs up and heads to Romania where Ivo is ensconced in a farming community. The secret is unwrapped.

Unfortunately, this film was already shown today and there are no more scheduled screenings. Check the festival's site for any possible programming changes.

Producer: Mario Mazzarotto, Emanuele Nespeca
Editor: Catalin Cristutiu
Screenwriter: Ezio Abbate, Adriano Valerio
Cinematographer: Jonathan Ricquebourg
Music: Assen Avramov
Principal Cast: Edoardo Gabbriellini, Elena Radonicich, Piera Degli Esposti, Stefan Velniciuc, Ovanes Torosian
Filmography: Debut Feature
Print Source: EZ Films

The Other Side
Director: Roberto Minervini
This will be the American premiere of "The Other Side". It was shown at the Toronto Film Festival last September.

The title presumably refers to “the tracks,” this being a disquietingly graphic portrait of America’s dirt poor, subsisting on a diet of beer, tobacco, heroin and crack in trailer homes in Louisiana and Texas. Brace yourself: Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini will not flinch. You get more than a hint of what’s coming in the film’s opening scene, when a man wakes up in the bushes stark naked. This is Mark, and we’ll be seeing a lot more of him: shooting up, screwing, dealing, breaking into a school and shooting up some more. For all that, Mark’s a likeable guy, mostly. Which is more than can be said for the militia that pops up later, avowed libertarians training for the forthcoming revolution. Uninterested in (or oblivious to) documentary ethics or the supposed demands of narrative fiction, Minervini is carving out his own truth here. It’s an unpalatable one, to be sure, alternately pathetic and alarming, but you won’t doubt its authenticity, or its validity. This is the other side of the American Dream: the human detritus, angry, abandoned, high as a kite.

The first screening n 8 January is already sold out. Tickets are still available here for the 9th.

Producer: Paolo Benzi, Muriel Meynard, Dario Zonta
Editor: Marie-Hélène Dozo
Screenwriter: Roberto Minervini, Denise Ping Lee
Cinematographer: Diego Romero Suarez-Llanos
Music: Bertrand DeFosse

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