Scotland’s annual showcase of Italian cinema returns with a diverse selection of some of the best films of the past twelve months. As ever, the Festival celebrates the work of both established auteurs as well as emerging directors and this year’s programme takes audiences from Rome to Calabria, Trieste to Sicily, Sardinia to Naples. We have family dramas, atmospheric noirs, dazzling comic book adventures, neo-westerns, historical biopics, offbeat fables and much more. Most of the titles are either UK or Scottish premieres, including our opening film, Michelangelo Frammartino’s Il Buco.
The retrospective screenings include a tribute to the late Italian film icon Monica Vitti and a centenary celebration of the great political filmmaker Francesco Rosi.
The Italian Film Festival is programmed by Dr Pasquale Iannone – who will introduce selected screenings – and is supported by Creative Scotland and the Italian Institute of Culture.
A CHIARA by Jonas Carpignan
Jonas Carpignano concludes his trilogy set in the Calabrian town of Gioia Tauro with an engrossing character study. Swamy Rotolo plays Chiara, a 15 year old who finds out some uncomfortable truths about the family patriarch (played by Rotolo’s real-life father, Claudio). While a stand-alone film, A Chiara touches on many of the same themes from the previous two entries in Carpignano’s trilogy, including the ever-present shadow of organised crime and the tensions between indigenous Calabrians and the immigrant community.
Filmhouse – Wednesday 25th May 20:40
Glasgow Film Theatre – Wednesday 25th May 20:20
Dundee Contemporary Arts – Thursday 26th May 18:00
Belmont Filmhouse – Wednesday 25th May 20:30
Eden Court – Saturday 21st May 18:00
BLUE EYES (OCCHI BLU) by Michela Cescon
Treviso-born actress Michela Cescon (Vincere, The Girl in the Fog) makes her feature debut as director with a lean, atmospheric thriller she’s described as an homage to the noirs of Jean-Pierre Melville. Blue Eyes stars two icons of European cinema Valeria Golino (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) and Jean-Hugues Anglade (Betty Blue). Golino plays an enigmatic, methodical thief who’s pursued by Ivano De Matteo’s police commissioner across a moody, nocturnal Rome. Anglade plays a retired French cop called in to help with the investigation.
Filmhouse – Friday 27th May 20:30
Glasgow Film Theatre – Saturday 21st May 20:45
DIABOLIK by Marco and Antonio Manetti
The wildly popular Diabolik series of comics was the creation of sisters Angela and Luciana Giussani and was first published in 1962. It follows the masked master criminal of the title and his partner, the equally iconic Eva Kant. The first film version – directed by Mario Bava – was released back in 1968. After more than five decades, Marco and Antonio Manetti deliver an irresistibly stylish 21st century update, with Luca Marinelli (Martin Eden) and Miriam Leone (Sweet Dreams) in the lead roles.
Filmhouse – Saturday 28th May 20:15
Glasgow Film Theatre – Saturday 28th May 17:00 (Intro by Dr Pasquale Iannone)
Dundee Contemporary Arts – Friday 27th May 18:00
Belmont Filmhouse – Saturday 21st May 20:15
Eden Court – Tuesday 24th May 20:15
FUTURA by Alice Rohrwacher, Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi
With echoes of 1964 documentary Love Meetings – in which filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini travelled across the country to gather opinions from fellow Italians on questions of love, sex and gender – Futura sees Alice Rohrwacher (Happy As Lazzaro), Francesco Munzi (Black Souls) and Pietro Marcello (Martin Eden) make their way up and down the peninsula (taking in beaches, gyms, farms, universities and various other settings) to conduct interviews with a cross-section of young Italians.
Filmhouse – Saturday 28th May 17:50
JEALOUSY, ITALIAN STYLE (DRAMMA DELLA GELOSIA…TUTTI I PARTICOLARI IN CRONACA) by Ettore Scola
Although the late Italian star Monica Vitti was best known for her dramatic performances in the 1960s modernist masterpieces of Michelangelo Antonioni such as L’Avventura, she was equally accomplished in comedy. In Ettore Scola’s dazzlingly inventive, endearingly scruffy satire, she plays Adelaide, a Rome flower seller caught between two equally eccentric suitors, played by fellow Italian acting royalty Marcello Mastroianni (La Dolce Vita, 8 ½) and Giancarlo Giannini (Seven Beauties, Casino Royale)
Filmhouse – Sunday 22nd May 20:30 (Intro by Dr Pasquale Iannone)
Glasgow Film Theatre – Sunday 22nd May 13:30
MARX CAN WAIT (MARX PUÒ ASPETTARE) by Marco Bellocchio
Marco Bellocchio’s first film Fists in the Pocket – a still eye-poppingly subversive chronicle of family dysfunction – was made when the director was in his mid-twenties and remains one of Italian cinema’s most explosive debuts. In many of Bellocchio’s fiction films of the subsequent five decades, families in all their many forms have remained a consistent theme. With the documentary Marx Can Wait, he turns the focus to his own in a powerful exploration of his twin brother Camillo’s suicide in 1968.
Filmhouse – Sunday 29th May 17:50
Glasgow Film Theatre – Monday 23rd May 18:10 (Intro by Dr Pasquale Iannone)
SALVATORE GIULIANO by Francesco Rosi
Arguably the masterpiece from Francesco Rosi, Italy’s titan of political cinema, Salvatore Giuliano tells the true story of the eponymous Sicilian bandit, delving into Giuliano’s links with the Mafia, police and politicians. Far from a conventional biopic (its subject is only very rarely glimpsed) the film is a multi-stranded, fast-moving thriller, which has exerted a profound influence of generations of filmmakers, most famously on Martin Scorsese, who has frequently described it as one of his all-time favourites.
Filmhouse – Sunday 29th May 20:15 (Intro by Dr Pasquale Iannone)
Glasgow Film Theatre – Saturday 28th May 14:05 (Intro by Dr Pasquale Iannone)
Dundee Contemporary Arts – Saturday 28th May 15:30
Belmont Filmhouse – Thursday 26th May 20:30
Eden Court – Wednesday 25th May 20:15
THE GIANTS (I GIGANTI) by Bonifacio Angius
The third feature from Sardinian auteur Bonifacio Angius, The Giants boldly fuses the sweat-drenched widescreen visuals of 60s spaghetti westerns with elements of Marco Ferreri’s controversial 1973 film La grande bouffe. As well as serving as director, producer and cinematographer, Angius co-stars as one of a group of male friends who gather at an isolated house on the outskirts of Sassari. Suffused with a tangible sense of unease, The Giants is a blackly comic take on Italian masculinity in crisis.
Filmhouse – Wednesday 25th May 18:10 (Intro by Dr Pasquale Iannone)
Glasgow Film Theatre – Thursday 26th May 20:05 (Intro by Dr Pasquale Iannone)
THE GIRL HAS FLOWN (LA RAGAZZA HA VOLATO) by Wilma Labate
Set in Trieste, The Girl Has Flown is the fifth feature from Wilma Labate, written in collaboration with writer-director siblings Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo. The film follows sixteen-year-old Nadia (Alma Noce) and the aftermath of a traumatising encounter with Brando (Luka Zunic). While other recent works by women filmmakers such as Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge or Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman have approached similar subject matter through heightened stylisation, Labate’s approach echoes Robert Bresson’s Mouchette in its quietly devastating restraint.
Please note that his film contains a scene of sexual violence
Filmhouse – Tuesday 24th May 20:30
Glasgow Film Theatre – Tuesday 24th May 18:05
THE HIDDEN CHILD (IL BAMBINO NASCOSTO) by Roberto Andò
With its story of a cultured professor forced out of reclusion after providing refuge for a wayward youth, The Hidden Child recalls Luchino Visconti’s 1974 drama Conversation Piece. Like that film, Roberto Andò’s adaptation of his own novel takes place mostly in interiors. Set in Naples, it sees piano teacher Gabriele (Silvio Orlando) take in Ciro (Giuseppe Pirozzi), a street-wise 10 year old who’s on the run after he was involved in an incident which hospitalised the mother of a local mob boss.
Filmhouse – Sunday 22nd May 15:15, Thursday 26th May 20:30
Dundee Contemporary Arts – Tuesday 24th May 20:00 (Intro by Dr Pasquale Iannone)
Belmont Filmhouse – Monday 23rd May 18:00
THE HOLE (IL BUCO) by Michelangelo Frammartino
Although he has only made two features, Milan-born filmmaker Michelangelo Frammartino has established himself as a unique voice in world cinema. Driven by an endless curiosity about the Italian landscape, his films are quiet, unhurried, utterly absorbing big screen experiences. Set in 1961, at a time when Italy’s economic miracle was in full flow in the industrial north, Frammartino’s third film focuses on a group of young speleologists who explore a vast cave in the southern region of Calabria.
Filmhouse – Friday 20th May 20:30 (Intro by Dr Pasquale Iannone)
Glasgow Film Theatre – Friday 20th May 20:40
Dundee Contemporary Arts – Sunday 22nd May 18:00
Belmont Filmhouse – Friday 20th May 20:15
Eden Court – Friday 20th May 18:15
THE KING OF LAUGHTER (QUI RIDO IO) by Mario Martone
Nominated in no fewer than 14 categories in the 2022 David di Donatello Awards (the Italian Oscars) Mario Martone’s ambitious biopic of actor and playwright Eduardo Scarpetta features a typically charismatic central performance by Toni Servillo (Il Divo, The Great Beauty). Set in Naples in the early 1900s, The King of Laughter chronicles the colourful personal and professional life of Scarpetta, whose children included Eduardo, Peppino and Titina De Filippo, 20th century Italian theatre’s most celebrated siblings.
Filmhouse – Saturday 21st May 20:15 (Intro by Dr Pasquale Iannone)
Glasgow Film Theatre – Friday 27th May 19:45 (Intro by Dr Pasquale Iannone)
Dundee Contemporary Arts – Wednesday 25th May 20:30
Belmont Filmhouse – Sunday 22nd May 17:00
Eden Court – Sunday 22nd May 17:15
THE MIRACLE CHILD (LA SANTA PICCOLA) by Silvia Brunelli
Silvia Brunelli’s The Miracle Child is based loosely on Vincenzo Restivo’s eponymous novel and tells of nine year old Annaluce (Sofia Guastaferro) who, much to the astonishment of her working class Neapolitan neighbourhood, one day finds she is able to perform miracles. The film chronicles the impact Annaluce’s ‘gift’ has on the community and her own family, including big brother Lino (Francesco Pellegrino). Brunelli’s micro-budget feature is a thoroughly modern fairytale and an assured, offbeat debut.
Filmhouse – Saturday 21st May 17:45
Glasgow Film Theatre – Sunday 22nd May 16:50
Dundee Contemporary Arts – Monday 23rd May 18:15
Belmont Filmhouse – Tuesday 24th May 18:00
THE PEACOCK’S PARADISE (IL PARADISO DEL PAVONE) by Laura Bispuri
A family is reunited for a celebration during which secrets are steadily unearthed – it’s a conceit familiar from films as diverse as Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen, Ben Wheatley’s Happy New Year, Colin Burstead or Lulu Wang’s The Farewell. Yet writer-director Laura Bispuri gives it an unusual twist in her third feature. French cinema icon Dominque Sanda (The Conformist, 1900) plays matriarch Nena, who on the occasion of her birthday welcomes her adult children and grandchildren back to her seaside home.
Filmhouse – Monday 23rd May 18:15
Glasgow Film Theatre – Saturday 21st May 15:30
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