Cinema Made in Italy (CMII) returns to London this spring with exclusive presentations of nine new Italian feature films to UK audiences, presented by the internationally renowned Cinecittà. Curated by Artistic Director Adrian Wootton OBE, the programme will provide the opportunity for audiences to watch premieres and previews from 12-16 March at BFI Southbank. This edition of CMII will also be celebratory, marking the 15th year of sharing some of the best in contemporary Italian cinema with introductions by the filmmakers and followed by Q&As.
This year’s diverse showcase of titles and topics will highlight the work of award-winning and internationally acclaimed filmmakers, including an emphasis on female directors and with the addition of a specially restored classic. Each of the titles to screen have recently premiered in the leading international film festivals, such as Venice and Berlin, and garnering critical acclaim along the way. Cinema Made in Italy will launch on Wednesday 12 March with the UK premiere of The Time it Takes (Il tempo che ci vuole) by Francesca Comencini and will close on Sunday 16 March with The Great Ambition (La grande ambizione), the new biographical drama by Andrea Segre, starring Elio Germano as the visionary politician Enrico Berlinguer.
Also based on true events, and with the goal of a true democratic and liberal movement for freedom, is Diva Futura by Giulia Louise Steigerwalt, and the satirical, sometimes moving, account of photographer, director, producer and romantic Riccardo Schicchi. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s his modelling agency turned film studios launched the careers of international ‘adult’ stars, including Ilona Staller (often known as ‘Cicciolina’ and who famously married the American artist Jeff Koons) and Moana Pozzi. In seeking to break away from the constraints of a country dominated by Catholicism he created a platform for porn actors such as Cicciolina to become a member of the Parliament.
Less sensationalist and more neo-realist is Anywhere, Anytime, the directorial debut from Milad Tangshir where a young and undocumented migrant from Senegal tries to earn a living in Turin with the odds stacked against him. With what has been deemed an ode to De Sica’s classic Bicycle Thieves, there is also a nod to filmmakers such as Ken Loach, with the use of non-actors and the empathetic lens cast on them. Similarly, the quasi-documentary Vittoria, by Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kaufmann, uses the real-life couple whose story is re-enacted. A tender and thought-provoking look at the human desire to give love as much as receive it, when a woman who is grieving the death of her father begins to dream of adopting a daughter.
Screening in an international premiere, women’s achievements in culture is a theme shared by Love and Glory – The Young Deledda (L’amore e la Gloria La giovane Deledda) by Maria Grazia Perria and Gloria! by Margherita Vicario. The former an insightful rendering of the Sardinian writer Grazia Deledda, who began writing about her rural family life in 1888, aged 17, and who would become the second woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1926. Documentary maker Perria lends empathy to the isolation of the writer, removed from mainland Italy, and seeking a vocation when under pressure to marry, evoking comparisons to the Brontë Sisters, or George Eliot. In Gloria! a seemingly mute young woman conceals an extraordinary talent while in service as a domestic for a musical institute for girls in 1800. A secret quartet is formed which celebrates the creative power of women and challenges the patriarchal power that governs them.
Masculinity in war forms a basis for Battleground (Campo Di Battaglia), by the Academy Award nominated director Gianni Amelio, and the arrogance from power when two doctors ‘play god’ with the life of young soldiers in WWI. The lives lost from conflict is weighed against each practitioner’s philosophical approach to the war as the ‘Spanish Flu’ spreads through Europe in 1918; starring Alessandro Borghi (The Eight Mountains) as the surgeon whose value of life creates a dark secret. The American Backyard (L’orto americano) marks a return to the horror genre for Pupi Avati – a master of Giallo and lauded for his versatility across filmmaking. In this gothic thriller, troubled writer Filippo Scotti (Hand of God) is driven to solve the mystery of a beautiful American nurse whose disappearance haunts her mother, played by Rita Tushingham.
The classic restoration to feature in the CMII programme will be Bread, Love and Dreams (Pane amore e fantasia, 1953) from the archives of Cinecittà. Directed by Luigi Comencini, the popular post-war director of over 40 films and father of Francesca Comencini, the film stars Gina Lollobrigida and Vittorio De Sica in a romantic comedy that won the Silver Bear award in Berlin, 1954 and earned a nomination for Best Screenplay in the Academy Awards, 1955. The film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved and that “have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978”.
