News

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...

A new Italian distribution and international sales company called PiperFilm is launching in Cannes, having scored rights for Italy to Paolo Sorrentino’s Cannes competition title “Parthenope.”

Former Vision Distribution managing director Massimiliano Orfei is president of PiperFilm, while Luisa Borella, who is also a former top-level Vision Distribution executive, serves as the new media company’s COO.

PiperFilm is adopting an innovative distribution model by striking 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 of movies in Italian theatres.

“This procedure will ensure that films branded PiperFilm will reach Italian film audiences in their entirety,” the company said in a statement, which noted that they are “building a new business model thanks to a partnership with the largest players on the Italian and international market.

Exclusive: Universal Pictures International has acquired French rights for Italian actress and screenwriter Paola Cortellesi’s feature directorial debut hit There’s Still Tomorrow, in a deal brokered by Vision Distribution.

The drama is currently enjoying a phenomenal box office run in Italy where it has clocked up almost two million admissions since its theatrical launch on October 26 for a box office of some €13m.

It is the best result for an Italian film this year and the biggest box office for a local picture since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

Set in the lead up to Italy’s historic post-World War Two institutional referendum on June 2, 1946, in which women were allowed to vote for the first time, the film world premiered as the opening film of the Rome Film Festival in October.

Cortellesi stars as a downtrodden Rome housewife run ragged by her violent husband (Valerio Mastandrea) and unruly...

Strong release slate, younger audiences, event screenings, more summer releases and government initiatives have boosted Italian exhibitors.

Italy’s box office is finally sparking back to life and starting to pull out of its post-pandemic doldrums. Exhibitors in the country grossed €221.4m in the first six months of this year, a 57.2% increase compared to the same period in 2022 according to Italian box office company Cinetel.

The success is being driven by a strong release slate, younger audiences, event screenings, more summer releases and government initiatives to support cinemagoing, experts said. Admissions in the first half of the year soared to 31.6 million,...

Italian director Stefano Sollima, who is known in Hollywood for “Sicario: Day of the Soldado,” “Without Remorse” and TV show “Gomorrah,” is back behind camera on a contemporary Rome-set crimer titled “Adagio.”

Shooting started Sept. 5 on “Adagio” which features an ensemble cast of Italian A-listers comprising Pierfrancesco Favino (“Nostalgia”), Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”), Valerio Mastandrea (“Perfect Strangers”) and Adriano Giannini (“The Ties”).

“I am eager and full of enthusiasm about finally returning to depict my city after all these years. Rome has changed, and so have I,” Sollima said in a statement for Variety. He went on to describe “Adagio” as a dark story of revenge and redemption, which will be the last chapter of my Roman criminal trilogy.”

The previous two installments in this trilogy are “A.C.A.B: All Cops Are Bastards,” from 2012, and “Suburra,” from 2015, which was subsequently spun out into a Netflix TV series.

The “Adagio” story...

Italian auteur Mario Martone, who was recently in Cannes with “Nostalgia,” is set to direct a high-profile doc about the late Massimo Troisi, one of Italy’s most beloved comic actors who starred in the Oscar-winning film “Il Postino.”

Troisi, who played the simple postman who rides his bicycle on the sandy terrain of an Italian island to deliver mail to his sole client, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda, died tragically of congenital heart failure at age 41 in June 1994, the day after “Il Postino” finished shooting at Rome’s Cinecittà studios.

The film directed by Michael Radford, which also starred Maria Grazia Cucinotta and Philippe Noiret, became an arthouse sensation one year later when it opened in the U.S. distributed by Miramax.

“Il Postino” went on to win an Oscar in 1996 for best dramatic score, having earned five nominations, including for best film, as well as best director for Radford,...

Vision Distribution, the Italian theatrical distributor jointly operated by pay-tv operator Sky Italia and five prominent Italian production companies, is expanding into international film sales with a new company called Vision Distribution International, to be headed by veteran sales agent Catia Rossi.

The new sales company will launch at the Berlin fest’s European Film Market in February.

Vision Distribution was set up in 2016 when Sky joined forces with ITV-owned Cattleya, Fremantle’s Wildside, Lucisano Media Group, Palomar, and Indiana Production which are among the country’s leading production outfits, to create an innovative content alliance and a theatrical distribution arm for the Italian unit of the pan-European paybox now owned by Comcast.

They are now Italy’s 4th largest domestic distributor, and the 8th overall, with 26 titles released in 2019, four of which among the top ten grossers at the Italian box office last year. Vision Distribution has a...

Exclusive: Colette first English-language film for buyer backed by Sky; will co-release with Good Films.

Wash Westmoreland’s (Still Alice) upcoming biopic Colette, starring Keira Knightley, will be the first international title released by major new Italian distributor Vision Distribution, which is backed by Sky Italia.

Vision will release the movie in partnership with Good Films who picked up the anticipated biopic from HanWay last year.

A launch date has yet to be finalised for the film, which is currently in production.

The Wire And The Affair star Dominic West stars opposite Keira Knightley in Colette, which is based on the colourful life of the French author who wrote Gigi and Cheri and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. Producers are Killer Films, Number 9 and Bold Films.

Shakeup

Headed by former Warner Bros. Italy managing director Nicola Maccanico, Vision Distribution is the Jv between Sky Italia - Italy’s top pay-tv provider - and major local producers...