The 22nd edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema, returns to Film at Lincoln Center from June 1 to 8 with a diverse and extensive lineup of contemporary Italian films.
The festival opens with Francesca Archibugi’s latest feature The Hummingbird, adapted from Sandro Veronesi’s Strega Prize-winning novel, an at once epic and intimate chronicle of love and familial ups and downs that spans six decades and three generations, featuring Pierfrancesco Favino, Berenice Bejo, Laura Morante, Nanni Moretti, and others.
Additional offerings for this year’s edition include but are not limited to: Gianni Amelio’s masterfully executed Lord of the Ants, a deeply stirring biopic of the poet/playwright Aldo Braibanti; Roberto Andò’s 12th feature Strangeness, which stars Toni Servillo as Nobel Prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello, who, on a trip to his native Sicily in 1920, encounters a pair of gravediggers/aspiring actors and unexpectedly arrives at the idea for what will ultimately become his signature work; actress Monica Dugo’s directorial feature Like Turtles, a tragicomic chronicle of a family’s dissolution about a woman who, her husband having abruptly left her and their children behind, climbs into her wardrobe and refuses to come out; Michele Vannucci’s second feature Delta, set on the Po Delta in northern Italy, where tensions are rising among the small community that calls it home, especially between a lifelong native fisherman (Alessandro Borghi) and a wildlife warden (Luigi Lo Cascio); Paolo Virzi’s Dry, a wryly satirical ensemble drama (with a top-notch cast including Silvio Orlando, Valerio Mastandrea, Monica Bellucci, and others) about the vanity of humans in the face of global catastrophe during an imagined three-year drought; and Giuseppe Fiorello’s debut feature Fireworks, based on a true story set in Sicily in 1982, which turns a budding romance between two teenage boys into a moving examination of the painful moments that produce political change.
This year’s presentation includes a focus on Mario Martone, one of the key Italian filmmakers of the past 40 years, who has completed 17 features since his 1992 theatrical feature debut Death of a Neapolitan Mathematician. Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà pay homage to Martone (a perennial presence in the Open Roads lineup) by showcasing his most recent fiction film, Nostalgia, alongside two essential works from earlier in his career: 1995’s Troubling Love (co-written with Elena Ferrante) and 2014’s Leopardi.
FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS
All films are in Italian with English subtitles unless otherwise noted, and will screen at the Walter Reade Theater (165 W. 65th Street).
Opening Night
The Hummingbird
Francesca Archibugi, 2022, Italy/France, 126m
Italian with English subtitles
Adapted from Sandro Veronesi’s Strega Prize-winning bestselling 2019 novel of the same title, Francesca Archibugi’s latest feature is at once epic and intimate, a fragmentary chronicle of love and familial ups and downs that spans six decades and three generations. A psychologist (played by Nanni Moretti) walks into the office of married doctor Marco (Pierfrancesco Favino) and begins insistently grilling Marco (whose wife is in treatment with him, as it turns out) about his current relationship with a childhood love, Luisa (Bérénice Bejo). This inaugurates a kaleidoscopic, time-skipping journey through Marco and Luisa’s lives that sophisticatedly, movingly maps the ties that bind people together. Boasting an all-star cast (including Laura Morante, Kasia Smutniak, and Sergio Albelli), The Hummingbird is a richly emotional and enveloping examination of the human heart across time.
Chiara
Susanna Nicchiarelli, 2022, Italy/Belgium, 106m
Italian and Latin with English subtitles
The life of Saint Clare of Assisi—a onetime follower of Saint Francis, himself memorably depicted in films by Rossellini, Pasolini, Liliana Cavani, and Michael Curtiz—is inventively rendered in the latest from Susanna Nicchiarelli. Portrayed by Margherita Mazzucco (of HBO’s My Brilliant Friend), Chiara leaves her wealthy family to take a vow of poverty and join Francis and his followers, but it isn’t long before the young woman evinces extraordinary, possibly divine abilities that lead to a devoted order popping up around her. But will the Vatican recognize her and her order, or will it hold fast to the new pope’s belief that “no woman can set an example for anyone”? Using fourth wall-breaking musical numbers to striking effect, Chiara is a bold and formally surprising historical drama about a bold and spiritually surprising figure.
Delta
Michele Vannucci, 2022, Italy, 105m
Italian and Romanian with English subtitles
Something like a backwater noir cum Western, Michele Vannucci’s second feature is set on the Po Delta in northern Italy, where tensions are rising among the small community that calls it home. Threatened by industrial waste being dumped into the river and by fish poachers using electrical currents to wreak havoc on its delicate marine ecosystem, this area becomes the staging ground for antagonism between lifelong native fisherman Elia (Alessandro Borghi) and wildlife warden Osso (Luigi Lo Cascio). Vannucci unravels the conflict between the two men deliberately and with a mesmerizingly low-key air of suspense, sketching a showdown between tradition and modernity in which, by design, it’s seldom clear which side is which.
Dry
Paolo Virzì, 2022, Italy, 97m
Italian with English subtitles
An imagined three-year drought serves as the point of departure for the latest by Paolo Virzì, a satirical ensemble drama that features a top-notch cast (including Silvio Orlando, Valerio Mastandrea, Monica Bellucci, Vinicio Marchioni, Claudia Pandolfi, Sara Serraiocco, and others) and a clever way with social critique. Co-written by The Hummingbird director Francesca Archibugi and set in Rome, Dry follows a constellation of self-absorbed characters as the drought and subsequent water shortage take their toll on the city’s populace, exacerbating socioeconomic tensions and perhaps suggesting the imminent end of days. Virzì slyly observes these sometimes likable, sometimes repellent people as their paths cross amid the semi-apocalyptic circumstances, ultimately arriving at a wryly ironic film about the post-Covid world and the vanity of humans in the face of global catastrophe.
Fireworks
Giuseppe Fiorello, 2023, Italy, 134m
Italian with English subtitles
Set in Sicily in 1982, Giuseppe Fiorello’s debut feature chronicles the budding romance between teenagers Gianni (Samuele Segreto) and Nino (Gabriele Pizzurro) in an era inhospitable to their love. Gianni is frequently bullied due to his homosexuality; after a chance encounter leads to his meeting Nino and being hired by Nino’s father, the two boys forge a friendship that slowly but surely mutates into something more. Their bond is soon uncovered by their families, and the promise of tragedy grows to seem all but certain. Based on a true story and drawing from the sensitive performances of its two lead actors, Fireworks is a moving and deeply felt examination of the painful moments that produce political change. A Cinephobia Releasing release.
Like Turtles
Monica Dugo, 2022, Italy, 82m
Italian with English subtitles
Actress Monica Dugo makes her directorial feature debut in this tragicomic chronicle of a family’s dissolution. Dugo stars as Lisa, who lives in the historic center of Rome with her husband, Daniele (Angelo Libri), and their two children (Romana Maggiora Vergano and Francesco Gheghi); this ostensibly perfect family unit is thrown into upheaval when Daniele abruptly empties his side of his and Lisa’s wardrobe and leaves them, and Lisa copes with the emotional devastation by climbing into the wardrobe and refusing to come out. The children struggle to make sense of this very strange new normal and Lisa confronts past and future alike from within her cramped new quarters, as Dugo depicts the curious ways in which life manages to go on.
Lord of the Ants
Gianni Amelio, 2022, Italy, 134m
Italian with English subtitles
The latest from a perennial Open Roads presence, the great Gianni Amelio, finds the director rendering the life of another artist: the poet/playwright Aldo Braibanti, who was jailed in 1968 under a Fascist-era anti-homosexuality law after it was revealed that he was living with a younger male lover. Magnetically portrayed by Luigi Lo Cascio, Braibanti finds himself enmeshed in scandal when his lover’s father informs on him (and sets his son on a tragic program of electroshock therapy to “cure” his aberrant sexuality). As the intellectual awaits trial, he is visited by a journalist (Elio Germano) who is anxious to tell the real story. A masterfully executed biopic that looks to the past for a political roadmap of our fraught present, Lord of the Ants is a stirring portrait of a key moment in Italian LGBTQ+ history.
Margins
Niccolò Falsetti, 2022, Italy, 91m
Italian with English subtitles
A punk band finds itself in a sticky situation in Niccolò Falsetti’s charming and funny debut feature. Set in Grosseto in 2008, the film follows three bandmates (Emanuele Linfatti, Matteo Creatini, and Francesco Turbanti) as they receive the biggest opportunity of their short careers, opening for the American hardcore band The Defense at a gig in Bologna. When the concert is canceled, the penniless punks bite off more than they can chew, inviting The Defense to play a make-up show in Grosseto and setting in motion a chain of events wherein the boys will discover just how in over their heads they truly are. A lively comedy about the messes we’ll make for ourselves just for a chance to live out our dreams, Margins is a cinematic love letter to punk rock.
Princess
Roberto De Paolis, 2022, Italy, 111m
English and Italian with English subtitles
The lives of immigrants who must do sex work to make ends meet receive an eminently surprising, by turns comic and dead-serious treatment in Roberto De Paolis’s sophomore feature. The 19-year-old title character (indelibly, charismatically portrayed by first-time actor Glory Kevin) hustles in a forest on the outskirts of Rome alongside her friend/professional rival Success and lives with a group of other Nigerian women in a makeshift encampment. While making her rounds, Princess encounters a kindly yet misanthropic stranger (Lino Musella) foraging for mushrooms, inaugurating an unanticipated friendship—maybe more?—that could potentially offer her a chance at social assimilation. Eschewing sentimentality and self-seriousness for a more original, playful engagement with its weighty subject, Princess was written by De Paolis in consultation with real-life Nigerian migrant sex workers, several of whom appear as themselves.
My Summer with the Shark
Davide Gentile, 2023, Italy, 104m
Italian with English subtitles
Davide Gentile’s debut feature is a surprising and original coming-of-age story in which the mysteries of youth and the oneiric power of cinema intermingle to paint a young man’s inner journey. Thirteen-year-old Walter (Tiziano Menichelli) is off from school for the summer and is mourning the recent death of his father; idly wandering the Roman coast, he becomes transfixed by a seemingly abandoned villa and its grand swimming pool. But it turns out this fascinating villa isn’t so vacant after all, and an utterly dreamy adventure ensues. Also starring Claudio Santamaria, Virginia Raffaele, and Edoardo Pesce.
Strangeness
Roberto Andò, 2022, Italy, 103m
Italian with English subtitles
The inspiration behind one of modern Italian theater’s greatest and most iconoclastic works is imaginatively staged in Roberto Andò’s 12th feature. Toni Servillo stars as Nobel Prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello, who, on a trip to his native Sicily in 1920 following many years away, encounters a pair of gravediggers/aspiring actors, Onofrio and Sebastiano (comedy duo Salvo Ficarra and Valentino Picone), whose hilariously, charmingly amateurish nightly stage productions stir Pirandello out of a creative blockage and help him to arrive at the idea for what will ultimately become his signature work. Strangeness is a delightfully irreverent tribute to the curious inspirations underlying creative achievement and, as Andò notes, is “a film about theater which examines the audience, too.”
Focus on Mario Martone
One of the key Italian filmmakers of the past 40 years, Mario Martone has completed 17 features since his 1992 theatrical feature debut, Death of a Neapolitan Mathematician. Martone’s work is distinguished by its rich portraits of Naples and the lives of its current and former inhabitants, a desire to explore Italian history, and magnificent performances from his actors, befitting Martone’s parallel career as a theater director. (Indeed, prior to becoming a filmmaker, Martone worked in experimental theater.) His varied oeuvre includes shorts, TV movies, and documentaries, and each new addition to his filmography marks something of an event in Italian cinema. At this year’s Open Roads, we pay homage to Martone (a perennial presence in the festival’s lineup) by showcasing his most recent fiction film, Nostalgia, alongside two essential works from earlier in his career: 1995’s Troubling Love (co-written with Elena Ferrante) and 2014’s Leopardi.
Leopardi
Mario Martone, 2014, Italy, 143m
Italian, Greek, and French with English subtitles
Mario Martone again returned to the 19th century in this sensitive, exquisitely shot portrait of the cherished Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi. The son of a domineering count who prizes knowledge over all else, Giacomo (a brilliant Elio Germano) is locked away in a library to study. Yet he yearns to see the world, and his struggles with social and familial obligations color his Romantic writings about the human condition. When he is finally able to leave the family estate and becomes the toast of Florence’s literary circles, ill health and poor finances stymie his happiness. Shot on the Leopardi estate!
Nostalgia
Mario Martone, 2022, Italy/France, 117m
Italian with English subtitles
The past asserts itself in the present in the latest fiction feature from Mario Martone, a richly traced, Naples-set drama about a man’s return to the city in which he grew up and the skeletons in the closet that he rediscovers upon arrival. Pierfrancesco Favino stars as Felice, who has been away from Italy for 40 years, having emigrated to Egypt, where he now has a successful construction business and is happily married. He reunites with his mother, whose health is rapidly declining, and soon crosses paths with a figure from his past, Oreste (Tomasso Ragno), who has, in his absence, become the old neighborhood’s top crime boss. Favino is utterly mesmerizing as a man haunted by a past that is drifting ever more into obscurity while at the same time manifesting itself tragically in the here and now. A Breaking Glass Pictures release.
Troubling Love
Mario Martone, 1995, Italy, 104m
Italian with English subtitles
Among Mario Martone’s signature films is this 1995 thriller, co-written with and adapted from a novel by Elena Ferrante. A Neapolitan artist named Delia (Anna Bonaiuto), who has been living in Bologna, returns home to Naples following the sudden suicide of her mother. But Delia has her doubts about the official account of her mother’s death, and she sets about trying to find out what her mother was up to in the preceding years, leading her down a dark, labyrinthine path in search of the truth. Troubling Love captured three David Di Donatello Awards in 1995—Best Actress for Bonaiuto, Best Director for Martone, and Best Supporting Actress for Angela Luce as Delia’s mother.
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