Born in Florence in 1981 to an Italian mother and German Father, Rohrwacher attended Torino University, where she graduated with a degree in Classic Literature. Her first jobs after college included writing for theater and playing music.
She entered the film industry as an editor of documentary films before directing her first feature, "Corpo Celeste" (Heavenly Body), the tale of a teenage girl painfully assimilating into the culture of southern Italy and the Roman Catholic Church. The film premiered at Cannes Film Festival's Directors' Fortnight in 2011 and won several international film festivals before being released in the United States.
Rohrwacher's second feature, "Le meraviglie" (The Wonders), follows a family of beekeepers living in isolation in the Tuscan countryside. The dynamic of their overcrowded household is disrupted by the arrival of a troubled teenage boy taken in as a farmhand. At the same time, a reality TV show (featuring a host played by Monica Bellucci) is intent on profiling the family. Both intrusions capture the attention of the eldest daughter, Gelsomina, who struggles to find her purpose in the world. Rohrwacher gracefully conveys the girl's adolescent sense of curiosity and confusion. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered and features her sister, Alba Rohrwacher.
In 2015 she directed "The Djess," a short film commissioned by Prada as part of its label Miu Miu. The ninth installment of the "Miu Miu Women's Tales," the film was shown in the Venice Days section of the Venice Film Festival. Also starring her sister, "The Djess" features a stunning designer dress with crystal beads, which practically comes alive with emotion. The dialogue is presented as made-up language and pokes some fun at the world of high fashion with its temperamental models and hysteric paparazzi.
Watch "The Djess" on YouTube..
The trait that Rohrwacher's films share is their sense of fantasy. Perhaps it's the atmospheric lighting or the long, complicated silences between her characters. Whatever the process, she consistently succeeds in achieving a surreal atmosphere; this is her work's trademark and signature style. She also tends to tell stories from the point-of-view of innocence, whether a child or teenager.
"I can't imagine a better gift than to spend time in New York, take part in the events at the New York Film Festival, and to have the time to research in local archives and libraries for my next film," said Rohrwacher upon being named the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Artist in Residence. The program was launched in 2013 by Jaeger-LeCoultre and the Film Society of Lincoln Center as an annual initiative designed to support filmmakers early in the creative process against the backdrop of New York City and the New York Film Festival.
In addition to filmmaking, Rohrwacher directed her first opera, a new version of La Traviata for Teatri di Reggio Emilia, that premiered in 2016.
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...
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...
Photo by Rossella Vetrano On Day 6 of our series, 7 Days - 7 Women, in which we are profiling seven strong, talented women working as filmmakers, writers or visual artists, we talk with actress Sabrina Impacciatore about the diversity of her roles. Whether she's playing a devoted mother trying to protect her child, Jesus Christ's "Veronica" in Mel Gibson's controversial film, "Passion of the Christ" or a young woman coming of age, Impacciatore escapes into the life and mind of each character she takes on, sometimes so deeply that she believes she is actually them. It's a fine line between reality and fiction, but she treads it carefully and anyone watching her performance benefits from her emotional connection to the character that she becomes. I spoke with Impacciatore at the 2010 Open Roads: New Italian Film series in New York City. We talked about her lifelong dream of becoming an actress. She also gave me some insight into the diff...
"Salvatore Giuliano" is a 1962 Italian crime drama directed by Francesco Rosi that dramatizes the real-life events surrounding the life and death of the legendary Sicilian bandit and folk hero. Giuliano rose to notoriety after the liberation of Sicily from fascist control in 1943, when he formed a gang that joined a separatist army. When the army dissolved, he and his gang intensified their outlaw activities. One of their most significant crimes was the Portella della Ginestra incident, during which dozens of men, women, and children were killed or wounded. This act prompted the authorities to launch an all-out war against Giuliano. His defenses slowly crumbled, and on July 5, 1959, his body was discovered in the courtyard of a house in Castelvetrano. That moment serves as the starting point for Rosi's film. Giuliano's fame is tied to his involvement in the Sicilian independence movement and his battles against both the Italian government and the Mafia in the 1940s a...
A compelling 2018 documentary by Claudio Poli aims to shed light on a chapter of Nazi history that is still relevant today. “Hitler Versus Picasso and the Others” is the story of how the Führer didn’t just take countless human lives but also robbed a whole culture of its artistic heritage. Narrated by actor Toni Servillo, “Hitler Versus Picasso and the Others” takes viewers on an incredible journey in search of masterpieces stolen during World War II. The stories of individual works are told by people who witnessed the looting, much of which took place during raids on homes and galleries belonging to Jewish collectors. The documentary reveals that 600,000 works of art were stolen from private owners, museums, churches and galleries. The confiscated artwork was either kept by the Nazi elite, warehoused, sold or destroyed in bonfires. Few benefited more from this large-scale heist than Hildebrand Gurlitt, Hitler’s so-called art dealer, who kept many of the most priceless treasures ...
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