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The Rome Film Festival has set La Vita Va Così by Riccardo Milani as the opening film for its 20th edition, which runs from October 15-26.

Spanning 20 years, La vita Va Così is set in a picturesque corner of Sardinia, where a community is caught between the dream of employment and the defence of its land and identity.

Milani’s credits include hit Italian comedies Un Mondo A Parte, Thank You Guys and Like A Cat On A Highway.

Written by Milani and Michele Astori, La Vita Va Così features a cast that includes Virginia Raffaele, Diego Abatantuono, Aldo Baglio,...

Italian sales agent unveils Cannes market slate.

Italy’s Minerva Pictures has unveiled its Cannes Market slate which includes Ukrainian historical epic Dovbush as well as Italian family comedy And Suddenly it’s Christmas and Mexican thriller Black Minutes.

Dovbush is an action film directed by Oles Sanin about Oleksa Dovbush, a real-life 18th-century Robin Hood of sorts who formed a group of outlaws that robbed rich landowners in the Carpathian Mountains to give to poor Ukrainian villagers.

The film is set to be released in August after suffering substantial delays due to the Ukraine conflict. Potential buyers will be...

Updated: Cecchi Gori, the movie company that once dominated Italy’s film industry and collapsed in the mid 1990s, is being revived by a group of Italian investors that are backing a partial relaunch of the storied brand behind Oscar winners “Life is Beautiful,” “Mediterraneo” and “Il Postino.”

Cecchi Gori Group was officially ruled bankrupt in 2006 by a Rome court after being awash in red ink for a decade after its owner, movie mogul Vittorio Cecchi Gori, branched out from film into television and acquired the A.C. Fiorentina soccer club in a bold expansion attempt that put him in competition with Silvio Berlusconi and went horribly wrong.

But even after the company’s various Italian sides went bust, its U.S. branches – Cecchi Gori U.S.A. and Cecchi Gori Pictures – continued to operate, headed by producer Niels Juul. Operating out of Los Angeles, Juul has been instrumental to...

Italy’s David di Donatello Winners

Winners have been crowned for the 21 David di Donatello awards, the Italian film awards ceremony. Hidden Away, Giorgio Diritti’s drama about Italian painter Antonio Ligabue, won Best Film and Director. Sophia Loren picked up best lead actress for The Life Ahead, while Elio Germano picked up best actor for Hidden Away. Sam Mendes’ 1917 scooped best foreign film. Special awards were presented to Monica Bellucci Targhe, Diego Abatantuono and Sandra Milo. You can see the full list of winners here.

Netflix Greenlights Norwegian Sci-Fi Comedy

Netflix has greenlit Blasted, a Norwegian comedy sci-fi directed by Martin Sofiedal. The script from Emanuel Nordrum follows a bachelor party that stumbles into an alien invasion. Project comes from Are Heidenstrøm (The Wave) at Miso Film. Starring are Axel Bøyum and Fredrik Skogsrud. Netflix is planning to release in 2022.

Erik Poppe To Helm Quisling Feature

Utøya: July 22 director...

Other winners include Italian star Sophia Loren and two Netflix features.

Giorgio Diritti’s Hidden Away was the big winner at Italy’s David di Donatello awards on Tuesday (May 11), winning seven awards including best picture, best director and lead actor for Elio Germano.

The drama, which chronicles the difficult life of Italian painter Antonio Ligabue, is produced by Palomar with Rai Cinema, and premiered at the 2020 Berlinale, where Elio Germano won the Silver Bear for best actor. The film, which was the frontrunner going into the night with 15 nominations, also picked up prizes for cinematography, hair artist and sound.

Giorgio Diritti’s biopic “Hidden Away,” about crazed primitivist painter Antonio Ligabue, was the big winner at Italy’s 66th David di Donatello Awards, the country’s top film prizes.

The Davids were held with an in-person ceremony aired from two venues amid a strong spirit of restart as Italian movie theaters gradually begin to reopen.

“Hidden Away,” which was the frontrunner with 15 nominations, scored seven statuettes including best picture, director and actor honors won by Elio Germano who tackles “the fiendishly difficult role” of the self-taught artist “with customary gusto,” as Variety critic Jay Weissberg noted in his review.

The best actress statuette went to Sophia Loren for her role as Madame Rosa, a former prostitute and Holocaust survivor, in Netflix Original “The Life Ahead,” directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. The Italian icon’s return to the big screen after a decade had been snubbed by the Oscars earlier this year.

Italy’s 66th David di Donatello Awards are set to celebrate on May 11 a year of resilience for Cinema Italiano that also looks likely to germinate some creative renewal, just as Italian movie theaters start to reopen and production is booming.

Giorgio Diritti’s biopic “Hidden Away,” about crazed primitivist painter Antonio Ligabue, Gianni Amelio’s wistful “Hammamet,” which reconstructs the Tunisian self-exile of scandal-plagued Italian leader Bettino Craxi, and dark drama “Bad Tales” by the D’Innocenzo Brothers lead the crowded field for Italy’s equivalent of the Oscars, with no clear frontrunner.

Significantly, “Hidden Away,” which scooped 15 nominations, and “Bad Tales,” which scored 13, both star actor Elio Germano. And Germano also plays the lead in another standout title in the Davids race, Netflix Italian Original “The Incredible Story of Rose Island,” which landed 11 noms, including one for the pic’s producer, multihyphenate Matteo Rovere, whose Groenlandia Group is having a banner year.

The Italian international sales agency’s line-up at the Berlin-based market also includes 200 Meters, Zanka Contact, Why Not You and Il materiale emotivo. Released by Lucky Red on Prime Video’s VOD service back in January, Stefano Lodovichi’s The Guest Room is the first title to be offered up by True Colours at the Berlinale’s European Film Market (1-5 March). Guido Caprino, Camilla Filippi and Edoardo Pesce star in the cast of this claustrophobic psychological thriller, which was shot during lockdown and inspired by the Hikikomori phenomenon. When Mom Is Away... With the Family, meanwhile, is a family comedy produced by Colorado in collaboration with Medusa, which sees the couple composed of Fabio De Luigi and Valentina Lodovini reunite after the well-favoured work When Mom is Away. Diego Abatantuono stars alongside the duo in this sequel which was also directed by Alessandro Genovese. Three European co-productions likewise appear...

Italian director Gabriele Salvatores, who won the foreign-language film Oscar for “Mediterraneo” in 1991 and more recently helmed teen superhero franchise “The Invisible Boy” is in Berlin where sales company Rai Com is showing buyers footage of his upcoming road movie “Volare.” Pic stars Claudio Santamaria and Valeria Golino and is penned by Umberto Contarello (“The Great Beauty”).

Based on a widely translated bestseller by Italy’s Fulvio Ervas — which was inspired by a true story — “Volare” is about a boozing lounge singer (Santamaria) who accidentally intersects with his teen autistic son, whom he has never met before. He has an epiphany and decides to hit the road with him in an attempt to fight his son’s autism. They are chased by the boy’s mother (Golino) and her husband, played by Diego Abatantuono, who also starred in “Mediterraneo.”

Salvatores in Berlin spoke to Variety about making his return to the road movie genre.

Rome — Leading Italian film company Rai Cinema is producing new works by revered Russian auteurs Alexander Sokurov and Andrei Konchalovsky, as well as a slew of new titles from prominent Italian helmers Gabriele Salvatores and Gianni Amelio and younger standouts Jonas Carpignano and Susanna Nicchiarelli.

The production and distribution arm of pubcaster Rai has teamed up with the Sokurov Foundation on an unconventional historical work featuring rare archive footage of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Churchill captured in non-official circumstances. These leaders will hold imaginary conversations during World War II that reveal their “human nature, their vision of the world” and their personal takes of wartime events, according to Rai Cinema promotional materials.

This latest work by the director who explored the corrupting effects of power in “Moloch” (1999), about Hitler, and “Taurus” (2000), about Lenin, and who more recently shot “Russian Ark” and “Francofonia,” is working-titled “La risata tra le lacrime” in Italian,...

Name and focus changes for every section, which are now all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

The ninth Rome Film Festival (Oct 16-25) has revealed a diverse line-up including the Italian premieres for potential awards contenders including David Fincher’s Gone Girl. the world premiere of Takashi Miike’s As the Gods Will and Burhan Qurbani’s We are Young, We are Strong and European premiere of Oren Moverman’s Time Out of Mind, Toronto hit Still Alice and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.

This year for the first time the award-winners in each section of the programme will be decided by the audience on the basis of votes cast after the screenings.

Each section has changed name and focus for 2014 and are all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

Italian comedies Soap Opera and Andiamo a Quel Paese bookend the line-up.

Full line-up

Cinema D’Oggi

World premiere

• Angely...

"The Best Man" (Il Testimone dello Sposa) is a sometimes charming fairy tale about love set in the tradition-laden end of the 19th century. The feature, showcased at the Berlin Film Festival, has a few magical moments, but its slow pace makes this pretty love story a risky bet when it comes to boxoffice returns.

Italian star Diego Abatantuono ("Mediterraneo") plays the closed-mouthed, macho Angelo, who returns to Italy after making his fortune in America to serve as best man at a friend's wedding on New Year's Eve 1899. The bride in this arranged marriage is the stunningly beautiful Francesca (Ines Sastre), but she is not attracted to her groom, Edgardo (Dario Cantarelli), and pines for true love.

When Francesca's eyes meet Angelo's at the altar, it's love at first sight, but she has already said "I do", and the evening that follows is a disaster.

Francesca is torn between admitting her newfound love and hiding it to protect her family, and her mother (Valeria D'Obici) is sent into a tailspin trying to control the damage. (To make matters worse, Francesca's father is in debt to Edgardo).

The most charming parts of the film are director-screenwriter Pupi Avati's observations of the family's and neighbors' quirky social interaction and of the sometimes superstitious Catholic-influenced wedding traditions of the time.

But those moments don't come as fast as they should, the dialogue is not witty enough, and the mishaps are not as funny as they should be. Worse, we are never sure whether Angelo shares Francesca's feelings, a serious flaw in the film.

THE BEST MAN (Il Testimone dello Sposa)

Luigi & Aurelio De Laurentiis and Antonio Avati present

a Filmauro/Duea Film production

Director-screenwriter: Pupi Avati

Producers: Aurelio De Laurentiis, Antonio Avati

Director of photography: Pasquale Rachini

Production designers: Alberto Cottignoli,

Steno Tonelli

Costume designer: Vittoria Guaita

Editor: Amedeo Salfa

Music: Riz Ortolani

Cast:

Angelo: Diego Abatantuono

Francesca: Ines Sastre

Edgardo: Dario Cantarelli

Peppina: Cinzia Mascoli

Olimpia: Valeria D'Obici

Manlio: Toni Santagata...