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The first date is a theatre of managed anxieties, a performance where every line and gesture is scrutinized. Paolo Genovese’s film Madly takes this internal drama and places it directly on screen. The picture follows the initial romantic encounter between Piero and Lara, a seemingly simple dinner at her apartment. Yet this is no simple two-hander.

Genovese splits the screen and the story, inviting the audience into the minds of his protagonists. Here, a boisterous committee of personified emotions debates every choice, from flirtatious remarks to wardrobe selection.

The premise is a high-wire act of narrative architecture, promising to expose the chaotic mechanics of attraction. We watch Piero and Lara attempt to connect, all while knowing the puppet masters pulling their strings are in plain sight.

The Divided Self on Display

The film establishes its psychological territories with stark visual contrast. Piero’s mind is a spartan, industrial storage room,...

Of Paolo Genovese’s 2016 Italian phenom “Perfect Strangers,” the original Variety review warned “remakes will be rampant,” and sure enough, Guinness World Records made it official last fall: The hooky dramedy — about a dinner party where a group of friends agree to read their private text messages aloud — has since become the “most remade” film in the world, with no fewer than two dozen versions popping up everywhere from South Korea to Azerbaijan.

The success of that model seems to have gone straight to Genovese’s head, as the writer-director treats his latest feature, “Madly,” more like a format than a proper film: The high-concept romantic comedy — which personifies the conflicting thoughts a man and a woman experience during the course of their first date — is ripe for reinvention in a diverse range of languages and cultures. If and when that happens, however, one hopes each new filmmaker will make...

The Italian Screens showcase made its Shanghai debut at the 27th Shanghai International Film Festival, bringing seven contemporary Italian films to Chinese audiences as part of an ongoing push to deepen cinema ties between the two countries.

The program, which previously ran in Beijing for two consecutive years in 2023 and 2024, held its launch event at the Crowne Plaza Shanghai, with industry figures highlighting both the cultural exchange potential and practical business opportunities for Italian-Chinese film cooperation.

Roberto Stabile, head of international affairs at the Italian Cinema and Audiovisual Authority’s Rome-based Cinecittà division, joined Shanghai International Film and TV Festival Center director Chen Guo, Chinese distributor representative Li Na, and acclaimed Italian director Paolo Genovese, whose romantic comedy “Madly” (“Follemente”) opens the seven-film program.

Italian Screens is a joint initiative of Italy’s Ministry of Culture Cinema and Audiovisual Authority (Dgca-MiC) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation...

Exclusive: Rome-based Vision Distribution has sold a number of key territories in Cannes for Massimiliano Bruno’s comedy Love In Separate Beds.

The film has sold to Spain’s A Contracorriente Films, Poland’s Mayfly, Portugal’s Outsider Films, Israel’s New Cinema and Bulgaria’s Beta Film.

Starring Edoardo Leo and Claudia Pandolfi, it’s about a woman who hates men, and a man who hates complications. But after one passionate night ties them together, these two irreconcilable opposites are forced to coexist.

Love In Separate Beds is produced by Fulvio and Federica Lucisano and it is an Italian...

‘Perfect Strangers’ director Paolo Genovese has done it again with a new concept comedy titled “Madly” that is set to hit the global market after scoring mightily in Italy.

“Madly” – which is titled “FolleMente” in Italy – depicts a first date between a man and a woman in Rome and features all the voices that live in their brains which oscillate between embarrassment and laughter, each played by a different actor. The romance-tinged comedy has scored more than 2 million admissions and grossed more than $18 million at the Italian box office since it’s Feb. 20 local release via Rai Cinema’s 01 Distribution — and is still going strong.

Genovese co-wrote the screenplay with Isabella Aguilar, Lucia Calamaro, Paolo Costella and Flaminia Gressi.

“We are getting remake requests from all over the world,” producer Raffaella Leone tells Variety, adding that this time around “we want to manage things a bit differently” from what happened with “Perfect Strangers,...

It is a big moment fornewly launched Italian distribution, production, and sales company PiperFilm, which releases its debut film today (October 24) – Paolo Sorrentino’sParthenope, one of the most high-profile Italian movies of the year.

Set up earlier this year by former Vision Distribution executives, PiperFilm’s management team is led Massimiliano Orfei as CEO, alongside COO Luisa Borella, head of distribution Davide Novelli, head of international sales Catia Rossi and Emanuela Semeraro as marketing director.

PiperFilm acquired Parthenope in April, just before its world premiere in Competition at Cannes, and has been prepping its release strategy since then. “What better...

Exclusive: Wild Bunch production house Bim Produzione is readying a TV series adaptation of Fumettibrutti (Uglycomic), a popular Italian graphic novel trilogy about the life of a young transgender woman.

The show won the Wiftmi Award today at Mia in Rome after Bim boss Riccardo Russo presented it in the drama category of the Co-Production Market and Pitching Forum this week. ‘Fumettibrutti’ is the professional name of cartoonist and activist Josephine Yole Signorelli.

The eight-episode first series will include live-action scenes and others animated in the style of the trilogy. It is planned to Yole’s life from her adolescence in Catania, Sicily, through to the publication of her first novel, when she had transitioned and was realizing an ambition to become a cartoonist. It will not follow a linear storyline, and will see the lead character reflecting on herself, her transition from a teenage boy named P. in devoutly...

New Italian distribution company PiperFilm is launching its international sales unit at Rome’s upcoming Mia Market with veteran sales agent Catia Rossi spearheading the potentially high-powered player’s sales side having secured a small but promising multi-genre film slate.

Rossi is a former head of international sales at Vision Distribution, True Colours, and Rai Com. She launched True Colours and the sales unit at Vision. She’s now joining PiperFilm as director of international sales and will be unveiling the brand new PiperFilm lineup of Italian movies to buyers in Rome.

Domestically, PiperFilm is adopting an innovative distribution model having struck an agreement with Netflix under which the streaming giant will have the first exclusive post-theatrical window for Italy on their titles, while Warner Bros. Entertainment Italia will handle the operational distribution of their lineup in Italian movie theatres.

In Italy, the first PiperFilm to be released is Paolo Sorrentino’s “Parthenope,...

Do Not Expect Too Much Of The End Of The World (Radu Jude).The lineup for the 76th edition of the festival has been announced, including new films by Eduardo Williams, Leonor Teles, Lav Diaz, Radu Jude, and others.Concorso INTERNAZIONALEAnimal (Sofia Exarchou)Critical Zone (Ali Ahmadzadeh)Essential Truths of the Lake (Lav Diaz)Home (Leonor Teles)The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams)The Invisible Fight (Rainer Sarnet)Do Not Expect Too Much Of The End Of The World (Radu Jude)Lousy Carter (Bob Byington)Manga D’Terra (Basil Da Cunha)Nuit Obscure – Au Revoir Ici, N’Importe Où (Sylvain George)Patagonia (Simone Bozzelli)The Permanent Picture (Laura Ferrés)Rossosperanza (Annarita Zambrano)Stepne (Maryna Vroda)Sweet Dreams (Ena Sendijarević)The Vanishing Soldier (Dani Rosenberg)Yannick (Quentin Dupieux)Excursion (Una Gunjak).Concorso Cineasti Del PRESENTECamping du Lac (Eléonore Saintagnan)Ein Schöner Ort (Katharina Huber)Excursion (Una Gunjak)Family Portrait (Lucy Kerr)Dreaming...

A stellar precursor to the busy fall film festival season, Locarno Film Festival annually premieres some of the year’s most exciting cinema and 2023 looks to be no different. Taking place from August 2-12 in the Swiss town, the festival has now unveiled its lineup for the 76th edition. Highlights include Eduardo Williams’ The Human Surge 3 (brilliantly forgoing a second film), Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much Of The End Of The World, Lav Diaz’s Essential Truths of the Lake, Sylvain George’s Nuit Obscure – Au Revoir Ici, N’Importe Où, and Quentin Dupieux’s Yannick.

Speaking to its main section, Giona A. Nazzaro, artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival, said, “From Quentin Dupieux and his edgy surrealism to Lav Diaz. From the sarcastic humor of Radu Jude to the night poetry of Sylvain Georges. From the mad inventions of Rainer Sarnet to the abstract psychedelia of Eduardo Williams.

The Locarno International Film Festival unveiled the full program for 2023 on Wednesday, with dozens of world premieres set to screen in the 76th edition of the Swiss festival.

Locarno’s main Piazza Grande section will include several of this season’s festival favorites, among them Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall from French director Justine Triet starring Sandra Hüller; Ken Loach’s latest (and possibly last) feature, The Old Oak; Noora Niasari’s Sundance audience award winner Shayda, featuring Holy Spider star Zar Amir Ebrahimi; and Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s comedy Theater Camp, which won a special jury prize at Sundance. Other highlights include U.S. horror feature Falling Stars by directors Richard Karpala and Gabriel Bienczycki; Dammi from 71′ and White Boy Rick-helmer Yann Demange; and Magnetic Continent, the new nature documentary from March of the Penguins‘ filmmaker Luc Jacquet about the continent of Antarctica.

Italy’s Taormina Film Festival kicks off its 69th edition Friday evening against the backdrop of its landmark Teatro Antico amphitheatre with a “Pavarotti Forever” benefit event headlined by Placido Domingo and Vittorio Grigolo.

It’s not the typical opening for a film festival, but it is in keeping with the eclectic programming of incoming artistic director Barrett Wissman, whose interview with Deadline on his plans for the festival can be read here.

Much is riding on the edition, with Wissman being brought in to raise its local and international profile after a turbulent decade, which was compounded by the Covid pandemic.

Topping the bill over the first weekend is the Italian premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny in the presence of Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Mads Mikkelsen. It’s the first time a major Disney production has touched down at the festival since Inside Out in 2015. Indiana Jones,...

The 69th Taormina Film Festival boasts an impressive lineup of Italian and world premieres as it seeks to reboot and re-establish its status as a date to watch on the festival circuit. Located in the historical Sicilian town – its visibility recently getting an unlooked for boost with the second season of HBO’s ”The White Lotus” – will be hosting a series of screenings. The outdoor Teatro Antico will provide a suitably antique background for the Italian premiere of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” with Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, John Rhys-Davies, and Mads Mikkelsen in attendance.

The directorial debut of Italian artist Marco Perego, “The Absence of Eden,” will receive its world premiere. The film stars Perego’s wife Zoe Saldaña, Garrett Hedlund and Adria Arjona. The thriller tells the story of an undocumented immigrant fleeing a drug cartel whose path crosses with a U.S. Immigration...

Exclusive: In what will be her first film promotion appearance in a good long time, Amber Heard is set to appear at the 69th Taormina Film Festival for the world premiere of In The Fire. Heard will be in Sicily along with the film’s director Conor Allyn and co-star Eduardo Noriego. The film will premiere June 24 at the Teatro Antico di Taorina. The fest takes place June 23-July 1, 2023 in Sicily.

In the Fire is described as a supernatural thriller that stars Heard as a pioneering psychiatrist who sets out to treat a desperate child at a time when psychiatry is not yet a respected science. Set in 1899, the film follows a 38-year-old American psychiatrist as she arrives on a rich farm in Colombia after being called to solve the case of a disturbed child following increasingly insistent accusations that the child is the devil. While the woman tries to psychoanalyze the child,...

The Taormina Film Festival, one of Italy’s oldest movie celebrations, has undergone many makeovers through the years.

Held since the mid-1950s in the Sicilian resort that recently got a promotional boost as the location of “The White Lotus” Season Two, this storied summer fest boasts an 8,000-seat open-air ancient Greek amphitheater in the shadow of Sicily’s active Mt. Etna volcano.

In 2000, Tom Cruise stood on stage, greeted by hundreds of lit candles and a standing ovation to celebrate his 38th birthday while he was promoting “Mission: Impossible 2.” Ups and downs followed, as several chiefs took the Taormina reins over the the ensuing decades, until more recently the event fell off the international radar as it became mired in local squabbles and power play.

Enter Barrett Wissman, a Texan who for the past 20 years has been the chairman of Img Artists, which reps classical musicians, dancers and performing artists,...

Market

The Cannes Film Market has launched Cannes Investors Circle, which will commence with a keynote introduction by Liesl Copland, Participant’s executive VP, content and platform strategy, who will offer her perspective on the modern media landscape. The initiative will also feature a panel discussion titled Navigating Film Finance in a Changing World that aims to offer insights on global financing and market trends in 2023 and beyond. The panelists will include Elisa Alvares, finance expert at Jacaranda Consultants; Rikke Ennis, CEO of REinvent Studios; Emilie Georges, co-founder and CEO of Paradise City; Mike Goodridge, U.K. producer at Good Chaos who is also presenting Jessica Hausner’s “Club Zero” in the festival’s official competition; with film festival consultant Wendy Mitchell moderating.

The event will also include an invitation-only session where VIP private investors will listen to pitches of nine new global film projects at the investment stage. The...

The Italian premieres of Cannes Film Festival opener Jeanne du Barry starring Johnny Depp and Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny will be among the international highlights of the 69th Taormina Film Festival which gave a taster of its line-up at a press conference in Rome on Tuesday.

Principal cast for James Mangold’s Indiana Jones reboot including Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, John Rhys-Davies and Mads Mikkelsen are expected to be in attendance for the screening.

The event, unfolding June 23 to July 1 in Sicily, is under the new co-artistic directorship of Barrett Wissman this year.

There will also be Italian premieres for Lisa Cortes’s Little Richard: I Am Everything, a documentary about the life and career of the legendary musician, and A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One, starring Teyana Taylor.

Italian highlights include the world premiere of the comedy The Worst Days by Edoardo Leo,...

Alessandro Aronadio's Still Time (Era Ora) takes its time unfolding as the audience is momentarily left wondering why its protagonist, Dante (Edoardo Leo), out of nowhere starts losing control of time. For a man who believes time is money, Dante's 40th birthday proves to be a turning point of his life as when he wakes up after the night of celebration, and finds that time has decided to pick up its pace without delivering him a proper notice. Dante's inner tendency to rush through life as if it's a race to the finish line meets its greatest opposition when Dante slowly realizes that he's been skipping a year of his life every few hours. When Dante wakes up after the night of his 40th birthday, he finds that a year has already passed and his 41st birthday is knocking on the door. Much to Dante's horror, the realization approaches...

Still Time (Era ora) is an Italian film directed by Alessandro Aronadio starring Edoardo Leo, Barbara Ronchi and Mario Sgueglia.

An Italian film that starts out as a “romantic comedy”, and that threatens to dive into middle-aged drama and ends up turning it into Groundhog Day with a man trapped in a time he… can no longer remember.

An interesting premise about turning back time in the genre of movies that turn back time… with a much more sentimental than comedic approach.

About the Movie

If you are in the mood for a movie about watching life go by, this is a good opportunity to let yourself be imbued with nostalgia, and search – like Proust – for time lost in an amount of time that is much shorter than the French author’s novel.

As for the film, good performances, especially by Edoardo Leo, who knows how to compose the different...

Netflix has acquired global rights to Italian rom-com “Era Ora” (“Still Time”), marking a rare instance in which an Italian comedy is set to gain worldwide visibility.

“Still Time” is directed by Alessandro Aronadio, a Los Angeles Film School graduate whose first work “One Life, Maybe Two” launched from Berlin’s Panorama section.

The comedy stars Edoardo Leo (“Perfect Strangers”) as a workaholic named Dante who is perpetually late to everything important, and Barbara Ronchi (soon to be seen in Marco Bellocchio’s “La Conversione”) as his girlfriend Alice. The twist comes when Dante winds up leaping ahead a year in his life every few hours, just as he wants to slow down.

After showing up hours late for his 40th birthday party, Dante wakes up the next day and it’s already the day of his 41st birthday and Alice is four months pregnant. Then, upon waking up again,...

First we have Catherine Breillat getting back in the saddle, and now we have some great news coming out of Italy with Liliana Cavani working on her first feature film in more than two decades. Cineuropa reports that Alessandro Gassmann, Claudia Gerini and Angela Molina are toplining L’ordine del tempo – which is currently shooting in Rome until mid-October. The supporting cast includes Edoardo Leo, Ksenia Rappoport, Richard Sammel, Valentina Cervi, Francesca Inaudi, Angeliqa Devi, Mariana Tamayo and Fabrizio Rongione. We’re thinking the 92 year-old filmmaker will get an invite to the Venice Film Festival next year.…...

Antonia Nava’s Barcelona-based Neo Art Producciones has teamed with Rome’s Pupkin Production to co-produce gay romantic drama “Si las paredes hablasen” (“If Walls Had Ears”), the feature debut of Spanish femme director, Ceres Machado.

Scheduled to roll by this year-end or the first quarter of 2023 in Barcelona and Rome, the film will be produced by Nava and Pupkin’s Rita Rognoni.

Spanish actor Fernando Tejero is attached to star in a cast that will combine Spanish and Italian actors.

Co-written by Machado and scribe Salva Martos Cortés (“Maniac Tales”), “If Walls had Ears” will narrate, in 10 sequences, a Barcelona and Rome-set story of intense love, passion and pain between two men.

They are Juan, a 50 year-old married man who hides his homosexuality, and Leonardo, a 23-year Italian who arrives in Barcelona to try his luck as a soccer player.

Over a decade, they will live their romance, but...

Italy’s Vision Distribution has boarded Berlin Panorama title “Swing Ride,” directed by Chiara Bellosi, and will launch sales at the upcoming EFM on the pic about an overweight teenager named Benedetta who is pining for attention.

“Swing Ride” (“Calcinculo”) is a dark fable set in a small southern Italian town portraying the friendship between Benedetta, played by newcomer Gaia Di Pietro, and the skinny non-binary Amanda, played by Andrea Carpenzano whom Benedetta decides to follow in her “stray world,” as the director puts it in her notes.

Described by Bellosi as depicting an unusual friendship and the experience of empowerment, this coming-of-age film follows Bellosi’s first feature “Ordinary Justice,” which examined the lives of two families on opposite sides of a murder case and launched from Berlin’s Generation 14plus section in 2020.

Both pics are produced by Carlo Cresto Dina’s Tempesta which discovered Alice Rohrwacher and is...

The Goddess Of Fortune (La dea fortuna) Breaking Glass Pictures Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten Director: Ferzan Ozpetek Writer: Ferzan Ozpetek, Silvia Ranfagni, Gianni Romoli Cast: Stefano Accorsi, Edoardo Leo, Jasmine Trinca, Sara Ciocco, Edoardo Brandi, Barbara Alberti, Serra Yilmaz Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 11/18/20 Opens: November […]

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The actor-director is back on set after the hiatus caused by Covid-19, stepping behind the camera for the fifth time to shoot this Italian-Spanish co-production co-starring Marta Nieto. Edoardo Leo is back on set playing the dual role of director and lead actor in Lasciarsi un giorno a Roma, the fifth feature film to see him step behind the camera and on which filming began on 7 July in Rome. The film is produced by Fulvio and Federica Lucisano for Italian International Film in league with Vision Distribution, and is co-produced by Spain via Barcelona-based firm Neo Art Producciones. Also hailing from Spain is the film’s female lead who’s set to share the stage with Leo: Marta Nieto, who won the Best Actress award in Venice’s 2019 Orizzonti competition for her...

Based on the title alone, one would assume director Francesco Amato’s “18 Presents,” a terminal-illness-themed melodrama about a self-destructive young woman coping with the death of her mother, would place its emphasis on the special gifts the protagonist receives each year until adulthood. Not exactly. While this Italian-language weepie blessedly sidesteps schmaltz and saccharine, it disappointingly fails to capitalize on its promised premise. Neither emotional enough to pay proper tribute to the true story it captures, nor hokey enough to qualify as “so bad, it’s good,” this is a flaccid, failed attempt at heart-tugging poignancy.

Ultra-organized 40-year-old Elisa (Vittoria Puccini) seems to have it all. A good job running a temp agency. A decent-sized house in the Italian suburbs with her steady boyfriend (Edoardo Leo), who loves her dearly. Plus, she’s pregnant with a healthy baby girl. But on the same day that a slight problem arises in her third trimester,...

It is written by Ozpetek with his longtime collaborator and producer Gianni Romoli and Silvia Ranfagni.

Italy’s True Colours has picked up international rights to Ferzan Ozpetek’s anticipated new feature The Fortune Goddess.

Stefano Accorsi, Jasmine Trinca and Edoardo Leo are set to star in the film about a gay couple who are thrown into crisis when a friend asks them to take care of her children for a couple of days.

The Italian-language film is being produced by Gianni Romoli and Tilde Corsi for R&C Production with Warner Bros Entertainment Italia. It is written by Ozpetek with...

Title: Noi e la Giulia (Giulia and us) Director: Edoardo Leo Starring: Edoardo Leo, Luca Argentero, Claudio Amendola, Anna Foglietta, Stefano Fresi, Carlo Buccirosso. Giulia is one of the most popular female baby names in Italy, but it is also the name of a charming old fashioned car made by Alfa Romeo in the 60s and 70s; which in this flick will become the emblem of the pursuit of dreams during the mature stage of life. ‘Noi e la Giulia’ is the story of fully grown men who finally take the guts to stick to their Plan B: letting go of the profession they despised, to start anew by building [ Read More ]

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Psychological thriller acquired by Italian sales collective for world sales.

Italian sales collective Coccinelle Film Placement has taken on world sales of Austrian director Andrina Mracnikar’s psychological thriller Ma Folie.

The German-language feature stars Alice Dwyer and Sabin Tambrea as lovers Hanna and Yann whose relationship turns sour due to the insecurities of the latter.

Yann’s previously affectionate video love letters take on a menacing tone and Hanna wonders who she can trust, including herself.

It is the debut feature for Mracnikar, a former Berlinale Talent Campus alumni, after producing a number of shorts and documentaries.

Coccinelle will market premiere Ma Folie at the Efm. Austrian distributor Filmladen is due to release the film domestically in March.

Fledgling sales outfit Coccinelle was set up in 2013 by Rome-based industry veteran Francesca Breccia as a hub for freelance sales agents worldwide.

Breccia is at the Efm with Gaetano Maiorino and Jef Nuyts, who joined...

Woody Allen’s next film, heretofore known as ‘Nero Fiddled’, was officially re-titled yesterday and given a new name that should see it resonate better in its international territories, and so from here on out we’ll know it as ‘To Rome With Love’.

We now have the first eleven images to share with you, some images of the film itself and others including Allen on set, as well as the full cast line-up (which is excellent) and the full soundtrack details (which are just a little bit impeccable).

The romantic-comedy is made up of four vignettes, two of which revolving around American characters and two around Italian characters, with the main cast including the likes of Allen himself, Alec Baldwin, Penélope Cruz, Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg, Roberto Benigni, Judy Davis, Greta Gerwig, and Alison Pill.

The newly re-titled To Rome With Love will open in Italy on 20th April...