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Urban Distribution International has just dropped an international trailer for “The Guest,” the second feature of Italian director Duccio Chiarini (“Short Skin”) which the Locarno Festival confirmed as one of its Piazza Grande titles, a space usually reserved for what it conceives as its biggest crowd-pleasers.

Udi’S French theatrical arm, Urban Distribution, will release “The Guest” in France; Swiss distribution will be handled by First Hand Films.

“The Guest,” from a trailer made available in exclusivity to Variety, would seem to fit the bill. An end-of-relationship drama -comedy developed at Cannes’ Cinefondation La Résidence, which picks up on up-and-coming stronger voiced auteurs from around the world, “The Guest” turns on near-40 Guido, played dopey-ishly by Daniele Parisi (“Orecchie”), an academic for ever preparing a book on Italo Calvino.

A pregnancy scare, caught in the trailer, is for Guido maybe a sign that he and longtime g.f. Chiara should have a family; for Chiara,...

Alessandro Aronadio: 'Time constraints are helpful but it's also super challenging, so it pushes you to find solutions in a very short time' Alessandro Aronadio’s absurdist comedy Orecchie (Ears) is screening as part of the Scottish Italian Film Festival. The black-and-white film follows a day in the life of an unnamed anti-hero (Daniele Parisi), whose problems start when he wakes with an unsettling and constant ringing in his ears – and that’s before he spots the note on the fridge telling him his friend Luigi has died. Bad enough in and of itself, but he doesn’t know anyone called Luigi.

The film then follows him through a succession of often-surreal tragicomic encounters as he comes to learn something about himself. The film was made as part of Venice Film Festival’s Biennale College project – which sees filmmakers mentored to produce their films within a year and on a tight budget,...