Italian Cinema Today

Photo Credit: Archivio Luce Cinecittà Luchino Visconti’s 1957 film, “White Nights” (“Le notti bianche”), offers a thoughtful and poignant exploration of themes such as loneliness, desire and emotional vulnerability. Based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novella of the same name, it transports the tale from 19th-century St. Petersburg to a dreamy mid-20th-century Italian setting. While Visconti remains largely faithful to Dostoevsky’s narrative, his characteristic style infuses the film with emotional depth, striking visuals, and a focus on class and societal constraints.   The story follows a young man named Matteo, played by Marcello Mastroianni, who lives a solitary life in a small Italian town. One evening, he encounters a beautiful young woman named Natalia, portrayed by Austrian-Swiss actress Maria Schell, who is also feeling isolated. Although she is initially reluctant, Natalia eventually confides in Matteo about her love for a man who has promised to return and marry her, but he ha...

  Known for contemporary landscapes that fuse art and technology, Eric LoPresti is a Brooklyn-based artist with a strong sense of Italian identity.   “My father’s family emigrated from Sicily via Ellis Island in 1905, which might explain a deep connection I still feel with that incredible Italian landscape,” LoPresti explains.   Before attending graduate school at the Maryland Institute College of Art, he studied sculpture at several schools in Europe, including one in Greppocorgno near Perugia in the region of Umbria, under the guidance of the Boston-based sculptor Vincent Ricci.   “For me, this was a transcendent experience — my first time in Italy — and a chance to connect with the Italian modernist tradition,” he says.   Since then, he has focused on painting landscapes and other natural subjects, many of them inspired by the vast deserts of the Columbia Plateau in Washington State.    The COVID lockdown was a particular productive period for LoPre...

In a moving story that spans several decades, “The Macaluso Sisters” follows five orphaned sisters born and raised in an apartment on Palermo’s outskirts. They support themselves by renting out pigeons for events, a unique and symbolic business that reflects their resourcefulness and the transient nature of their lives. Directed by Emma Dante, who adapted the script from her 2014 play of the same name, the film boasts an all-female cast that brings a unique power to the story. It unfolds in three chapters that show how the tragic events of one day haunt the sisters through childhood, adulthood and old age.   The first chapter reveals the tragedy of the youngest sister, Antonella, who dies during a beach outing. She remains a permanent presence in the household, never aging. The film returns again and again to the beauty of the day at the beach when tragedy struck. The apartment is a central character, housing the memories and rage each sister carries inside her. This exploration of...

A wildly successful Christmastime film, earning over $8 million at the box office when it premiered in 2018, "La befana vien di notte" (“The Legend of the Christmas Witch”) is a wholesome holiday comedy that the whole family can watch. Directed by Michele Soavi, the film stars two of Italy's most diverse contemporary actors, Paola Cortellesi and Stefano Fresi, as gift-giving foes. Paola (Cortellesi) is a grammar schoolteacher by day, but at night, she turns into La Befana, the Christmas witch, a mystical being who brings gifts to the good kids and coal to the naughty ones.   On one of her Befana nights, she was attacked by a dog that tore her Befana gift list. When she returned home from a night of riding on her broomstick, delivering gifts to children all over the world, she realized that she had forgotten one child. When she discovered the torn-up list, she figured out who the child was, got back on her broom, and headed straight to his house. Having arrived late, the b...

In “Astolfo” (“Never Too Late for Love”), director Gianni Di Gregorio delivers a coming-of-age film for the golden years of life about a retired professor who leaves Rome to return to a tiny mountain village in Abruzzo. The film opens with the title character, played by Di Gregorio, walking through the streets of his Roman neighborhood, groceries in hand, only to find his landlord waiting for him when he arrives home. She is there to announce that he will have to vacate his humble residence to make way for her daughter, who is getting married soon.  After some contemplation, he calls his ex-wife to ask her about an old family castle he split with her in their divorce. When she confirms that a portion of the castle is his for the taking, he gleefully returns to his spacious new home only to discover it has been occupied by a squatter, who turns out to be an acquaintance from his childhood who is also down on his luck. Without hesitation, Astolfo adopts the man as his roommate. ...

“The Leisure Seeker” is Italian director Paolo Virzìs first English-language feature film. Starring Helen Mirren as Ella and Donald Sutherland as John, it follows a couple who leave town, traveling from Massachusetts to Florida, without informing anyone, including their two adult children. The kids find out about their departure when their son, Will, pays them a visit and is informed by the couple’s neighbor that she heard them depart very early in the morning in their 1975 Winnebago, which bears the name of the film’s title. Will then launches a hunt to find his parents and return them safely home, but Ella has other plans. She intends to take John, an intellectual and aficionado of Ernest Hemingway, to the Hemingway Home & Museum in Key West.   John is grappling with dementia and Ella, who copes with her sorrow by drinking a steady stream of whiskey, is clearly knocking on death’s door. “The Leisure Seeker” is a testament to their right to spend their final days as they wish ...