Skip to main content

Italian Films at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival

Update May 19, 2018

Two Italian filmmakers were awarded prizes at Cannes -
Best Screenplay went to Alice Rohrwacher for Lazzaro Felice..
Best Actor went to Marcello Fonte for his role in Matteo Garrone’s Dogman
&
Gianni Zanasi's comedy Lucia’s Grace was named Best European Film in the Directors’ Fortnight
Stefano Savona's Samouni Road won the L'Oeil d'or for Best Documentary given by the French Society of Multimedia Authors (Scam)

Congratulations!


Original Post

Five Italian films made the official program of the 2018 Cannes Film Festival plus one in the Directors' Fortnight category. They are:


AS IT IS ON EARTH by Pier Lorenzo Pisano: Cinéfondation Selection


The village was small, and now it's even smaller; only four houses still standing and a street. There is no one around. Nobody to say "hi" to, no one to whine about the heat to. The earthquake didn't even spare the sound of breathing. The story of two souls trying to mend a wound in a torn town.

DOGMAN by Matteo Garrone: En Competition


DOGMAN is the name of a pet grooming shop and also the tragic prediction of the main character’s metamorphosis from man to animal. Based on a true story that took place 30 years ago and of which nobody will ever know the truth, DOGMAN digs deep into the human dilemmas of the violence hidden inside each one of us.


EUPHORIA by Valeria Golino: Un Certain Regard


The film revolves around two distant brothers, forced together by life events. Matteo (Scamarcio) is a young successful entrepreneur who is open-minded, charming and dynamic. His brother Ettore (Mastandrea) still lives in the small provincial town where they were born, teaching at the local middle school. He is a fairly cautious and honest man, who has always stayed out of the spotlight out of fear of making mistakes. They are two apparently very distant people. However, a difficult situation results in the two brothers being given the opportunity to get to know each other, and they soon discover that they have a surprisingly close bond in a vortex of fragility and tenderness, fear and euphoria

LAZZARO FELICE (MY BITTER LAND) by Alice Rohrwacher: En Competition


The adventures of a man living on the margins of his society who can seemingly travel through time.


PAPA FRANCESCO – UN UOMO LA SUA PAROLA (POPE FRANCIS - A MAN OF HIS WORD) by Wim Wenders: Séances Spéciales


The film is only the second co-production that the Vatican has made with outside filmmakers and the first in which a Pope addresses the audience directly, discussing topics such as ecology, immigration, consumerism, and social justice.

Pope Francis – A MAN OF HIS WORD is a significant nonfiction film, as it is not a biography about the Pope, rather a film with him.

On March 13th, 2013, the Cardinal of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, became the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church. As Pope Francis, he has made communication a vital element of the Church and a key component of his remarkable work of reform.
In Pope Francis – A MAN OF HIS WORD, he responds to questions submitted from around the globe. Exclusive footage from the Vatican’s archive shows the Pope on journeys, sharing his ideas and ideals in different parts of the world.

TROPPA GRAZIA (LUCIA'S GRACE) by Gianni Zanasi: Quinzaine des Réalisateurs - Film de clôture


Single working mother Lucia (Alba Rohrwacher) is trying to find the right balance between life with her teenage daughter, a complicated romance and her career as a land surveyor. Lucia’s future is jeapordized when she realizes that an ambitious new building is environmentally dangerous due to the city council’s inaccurate maps. Lucia is torn by her decision to keep her mouth shut for fear of losing her job. A mysterious foreign woman tries to convince Lucia to stand up to her superiors and recommend a church as the only solution for the troubled building site. Lucia’s belief in miracles will soon be put to the test.

SAMOUNI ROAD by Stefano Savona: Quinzaine des Réalisateurs


In the rural outskirts of Gaza City, the Samouni extended family, a small community of farmers, is about to celebrate a wedding. It’s going to be the first celebration since the last war. Amal, Fuad, their brothers and their cousins have lost their parents, their houses and their olive trees. The neighborhood where they live is being rebuilt. As they replant trees and plow fields, they face their most difficult task: piecing together their own memory. Through these young survivors’ recollections, Samouni Road conveys a deep, multifaceted portrait of a family before, during and after the tragic event that changed its life forever.

Newly announced films include...
THE FIGHT by Marco Bellocchio: Quinzaine des Réalisateurs - Courts métrages
EVERYBODY KNOWS by Asghar Farhadi: En Competition, Film d'overture
IN MY ROOM by Ulrich Köhler: Un Certain Regard
THE BICYCLE THIEF by Vittorio De Sica: Cannes Classics

Movie descriptions were provided by Filmitalia. The 2018 Cannes Film Festival will be held May 8 - 19. Click here for more information.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Conversation with Actor Mirko Frezza of David di Donatello Winner "Il più grande sogno"

The 2017 David di Donatello award show, which took place on Monday, was an exciting event that celebrated many great contemporary talents of Italian cinema.  I was fortunate to have seen most of the nominees.  Among my personal favorites  is Michele Vannucci's  Il più grande sogno  simply because it is based on one of the most inspiring, beautiful stories I've ever  heard, and the person behind that story is as authentic and down-to-earth as they come. The film won the 3 Future Award, which is determined by the public. With Director Michele Vannucci and Actor Mirko Frezza I first saw  Il più grande sogno last September when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival. I didn't make it to Venice, but thanks to a great online platform called Festival Scope , which offers a handful of premieres to be screened on the web, I felt like I was there. The film itself blew me away, and then when I realized it was based on a true story, I knew t...

The Timeless Talent of Stefania Sandrelli

On screen since the tender age of 14, she has captivated audiences for more than 50 years with a compelling combination of strength and vulnerability. She achieved stardom at just 14 years old playing the angelic cousin of a love-struck Marcello Mastroianni in Pietro Germi’s “Divorce Italian Style.” More than half a century later, she is still going strong and remains one of Italy’s most esteemed actors. Stefania Sandrelli was born on June 5, 1946, in Viareggio in the province of Lucca in northern Italy. As a child, she studied music and dance. Then in 1960, she won a beauty pageant and was featured on the cover of Le Ore magazine. Her purity captivated the country and shortly thereafter, movie offers began pouring in. Just one year later, she made her cinema debut in three feature films: Mario Sequi’s Gioventù di notte , Luciano Salce’s The Fascist, and Pietro Germi’s Divorce Italian Style . She instantly became a star and before long was a key figure in Italy’s legend...

The Sweetness and Genius of Giulietta Masina

Fellini and Masina on the set of "La Strada" As open-hearted and sunny as Federico Fellini was dark and complex, they were perfect counterpoints during a half-century of marriage and professional collaboration.  Nicknamed a  “female Chaplin” and described by Chaplin himself as  the actress who moved him most,  Giulietta Masina confronted the tragedy of her characters with an eternal innocence and enthusiasm that gave Italians hope in the most challenging of times.  Born in 1921 in San Giorgio di Piano, a commune north of Bologna, Masina was the oldest of four children born to a father who was a music professor and violinist and a mother who was a grade-school teacher. Her parents sent her as a child to live in Rome with her widowed aunt while she attended school there. As Masina took an early interest in gymnastics, her aunt saw in her a passion for performing and encouraged her to pursue acting. So after high school, Masina attended Rome’s La...

Film at Lincoln Center honors Monica Vitti with retrospective featuring restored classics

Photo Courtesy of Archivio Luce-Cinecitt à A retrospective dedicated to the films of Italian cinema icon Monica Vitti will be held from June 6 to June 19 at Lincoln Center in New York City.  The 14-film series, titled "Monica Vitti: La Modernista," is presented by Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà and marks the first North American retrospective celebrating Vitti's 35-year career. "We are pleased to partner with Cinecittà to celebrate one of Italy's most revered actresses," said Film at Lincoln Center Vice President of Programming Florence Almozini. "It is a privilege to present decades' worth of films from Monica Vitti's illustrious and prolific career, especially with many restored versions of her legendary works." Monica Vitti, a key figure in film history, began her career in the mid-1950s and quickly became a captivating presence on screen. Her collaboration with director Michelangelo Antonioni produced memorable films in the 196...

The Anthology Film Archives Presents: The Italian Connection: Poliziotteschi and Other Italo-Crime Films of the 1960s and '70's

June 19 – June 29 Influenced both by 1960s political cinema and Italian crime novels, as well as by French noir and American cop movies like "Dirty Harry" and "The French Connection," many Italian filmmakers in the late-60s and early-70s gradually moved away from the spaghetti western genre, trading lone cowboys for ‘bad’ cops and the rough frontier of the American west for the mean streets of modern Italy. Just as they had with their westerns, they reinvented the borrowed genre with their inimitable eye for style and filled their stories with the kidnappings, heists, vigilante justice, and brutal violence that suffused this turbulent moment in post-boom 1970s Italy. The undercurrent of fatalism and cynicism in these uncompromising movies is eerily reminiscent of the state of discontent in Italy today. ‘The Italian Connection’ showcases the diversity and innovation found in the genre, from the gangster noir of Fernando Di Leo’s "Caliber 9" ...