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The Rome Film Festival has revealed its meetings programme for its 2024 edition, which will include masterclasses with actor and director Viggo Mortensen, writer Dennis Lehane and actress Chiara Mastroianni.

Mortensen is in Rome to present his second film as a director, The Dead Don’t Hurt, and will talk about the experience of making it and also about his career.

Lehane has written many novels adapted for the screen, among them Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, and Ben Affleck’s Gone, Baby, Gone and Live by Night.

Chiara Mastroianni is a guest of the festival for...

Twin directors Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, who are known to Berlin Film Festival audiences for stylishly gritty dramas “Boys Cry” and “Bad Tales,” are back with eclectic detective series “Dostoevskij,” premiering in the fest’s Berlinale Special section.

Set in the stark Roman hinterland, the six-episode show — produced by Sky Studios with Rome’s Paco Cinematografica — stars Filippo Timi as Enzo Vitello, a policeman whose mind is warped by an incident involving his daughter Ambra. He winds up on the trail of a ruthless serial killer, nicknamed Dostoevskij because of the letters full of gruesome details that he leaves at crime scenes. Haunted by the killer’s words, the cop embarks on a dangerous solo investigation, getting closer and closer to a disturbing existential truth.

“Dostoevskij,” which marks the D’Innocenzo brothers’ TV debut, stemmed from Sky Studios Italia chief Nils Hartmann asking them if they wanted to create a...

Sky Italia has dropped a deliciously dark first teaser for “Dostoevskij,” the TV series by twin directors Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, which will launch from the upcoming Berlin Film Festival in the Berlinale Special section.

The eclectic, six-episode detective drama set in the stark Roman hinterland stars Filippo Timi as Enzo Vitello, a detective whose mind is warped by a troubled past. He winds up on the blood trail of a ruthless serial killer, nicknamed Dostoevskij because of the letters full of gruesome details that he leaves at crime scenes.

Haunted by the killer’s words, the policeman embarks on a dangerous solo investigation, getting closer and closer to a disturbing existential truth.

The Italian duo’s stylishly gritty dramas “Boy’s Cry” and “Bad Tales” both previously launched from the Berlinale, while their most recent film, “America Latina,” bowed at Venice in 2022. “Dostoevskij” is their debut in the TV series sphere.

New films featuring Carey Mulligan, Adam Sandler, Amanda Seyfried, Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough are among 2024 Berlinale Specials lineup, the out-of-competition gala presentations at next year’s Berlin International Film Festival.

Spaceman, a Netflix sci-fi drama from Chernobyl director Johan Renck, starring Sandler, Mulligan, Kunal Nayyar, Isabella Rossellini and Paul Dano, will have its world premiere in the Berlinale Special gala sidebar. Sasquatch Sunset, an adventure comedy from the Zellner brothers which stars Keough, Eisenberg, Nathan Zellner, and Christophe Zajac-Denek, will screen in Berlin after its Sundance debut. Atom Egoyan’s Seven Veils, which had its world premiere in Toronto, and stars Seyfried alongside Rebecca Liddiard, Douglas Smith, Ambur Braid, and Michael Kupfer-Radecky, will also have its international premiere in the Berlinale Specials gala section.

Treasure (aka Iron Box), the 90-set English-language feature from German director Julia von Heinz (And Tomorrow The Entire World), which stars Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry...

New Disney+ original series “The Good Mothers,” which provides a fresh female take on the Calabrian mob, marks a case of truly organic collaboration between the U.K. and Italy to ensure that a great story didn’t risk losing an iota of authenticity.

The show, which is competing in the “Berlinale Series” section, depicts the Calabrian mob through the prism of three daring women inside the ‘Ndrangheta organized crime clan who collaborated with a female prosecutor and withstood the consequences of their attempt to escape its iron grip. It is produced produced by Juliette Howell, Tessa Ross and Harriet Spencer for London’s House Productions, which originated the project, and by Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Gangarossa for Rome’s Wildside, a Fremantle company, which helped to firmly root the story in its Calabrian context.

“Good Mothers” is based on a book by U.K.-based journalist Alex Perry and...

Italian twin directors Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo have started shooting in Rome on “Dostoevskij,” an eclectic detective drama involving a policeman with a troubled past.

This first TV series written and directed by the D’Innocenzo brothers – who are known on the festival circuit for dark dramas “Boy’s Cry,” “Bad Tales” and “America Latina” – is an in-house Sky Studios production produced by the Comcast-owned pay-tv player with Rome’s Paco Cinematografica.

Filippo Timi stars as Enzo Vitello, a sharp detective with a troubled past, who winds up on the blood trail of a ruthless serial killer, nicknamed Dostoevskij because of letters full of gruesome details that he leaves at crime scenes.

Haunted by the killer’s words, the policeman embarks on a dangerous solo investigation, getting closer and closer to a disturbing existential truth.

Rounding out the “Dostoevskij” cast are Gabriel Montesi (“Bad Tales”), Carlotta Gamba (“Dante”) and...

Franco-Tunisian film entrepreneur Tarak Ben Ammar’s Italian distribution and production outfit Eagle Pictures is beefing up its production side with the purchase of film and TV startup 302 Original Content.

The Milan-based 302 is headed by emerging producer Giuseppe Saccà who shepherded the 2020 Berlin-prizewinning drama “Bad Tales” by Italy’s Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo when he was working with his father, veteran producer and former Rai head of drama Agostino Sacca, under their Pepito Produzioni shingle.

Saccà, who left Pepito and joined 302 Original Content in July 2021, will stay on board as its managing director.

302, which was founded by veteran TV exec Piero Crispino — who has since exited — got traction in Italy’s kids’ space by producing shows for Disney that have travelled internationally, such as “Alex & Co” and “Penny on M.A.R.S.,” but also various types of content for local broadcasters Rai, Mediaset, Sky, Viacom and Discovery.

Under Saccà’s guidance, the...

Leading Italian theatrical distribution and production house Eagle Pictures has acquired a 100 stake in emerging independent film and TV production start-up 302 Original Content.

Giuseppe Saccà launched 302 Original Content in July 2021 and will stay on as its managing director.

Saccà previously produced alongside his father Agostino Sacca under the banner of Pepito Produzioni, the Rome-based company behind films such as Gianni Amelio’s Hammamet and Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo’s Bad Tales.

302 Original Content’s credits to date include Calabria-set romantic comedy My Brother And I about a brother and sister fighting for the love of the same woman, and the Marta & Eva teen series produced with Rai Ragazzi for Rai Gulp/RaiPlay.

“The acquisition of 302 further expands Eagle Pictures’ business in a constantly evolving audiovisual market,” said Eagle Pictures president and owner Tarak Ben Ammar.

Eagle Pictures was Italy’s top performing distributor in the second quarter of 2022 with a 22.5 share of the market,...

The Gucci family saga isn’t quite over.

Just months after the release of Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci” — a film that could see Lady Gaga nominated for her second Oscar — a TV drama and documentary focusing on the Gucci family is in the works from Comcast-backed Sky Studios.

The company is in early stages of development on a high-end TV series, and is in pre-production on a documentary series, both of which will tell “the story of a great family and a great brand,” says producer Nils Hartmann, senior VP for Sky Studios Germany and Italy.

Both projects were brought roughly a year ago to Sky by Marco Belardi for Leone Film Group, which led to an agreement with several members of the Gucci family, including Alessandro Gucci, Guccio Gucci Jr. and Giorgio Gucci. Giorgio Gucci is a young Italian producer who will serve as executive producer on the still-untitled docuseries.

Coccinelle Film Sales has taken world rights to Italian director Wilma Labate’s female empowerment drama “The Girl Has Flown,” which recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

Pic will have its market premiere at Rome’s Mia Market prior to also playing at the upcoming Rome Film Festival.

The latest film by Labate – a veteran auteur known for political and female-centric dramas such as “My Generation” and “Sunday” – is based on an idea by Italian twins Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, who made a splash in Berlin in 2019 as co-directors of “Bad Tales,” winner of the Silver Bear for best screenplay. They more recently helmed drama “America Latina” in competition at Venice this year.

The D’Innocenzo Brothers and Labate co-wrote the screenplay for “Girl Has Flown,” which turns on a lonely and restless teenager named Nadia living in the Italian border city of Trieste at the northern tip of Italy’s Adriatic coast,...

Sales

Abacus Media Rights has sold documentary “The Beatles and India” to HBO Max for Latin America, BritBox North America for the U.S. and Canada, Channel 4 for the U.K., Foxtel for Australia, Channel One for Russia, and A Contracorriente Films for Spain, with more deals in the pipeline.

Inspired by Ajoy Bose’s “book Across The Universe – The Beatles in India,” the film marks Bose’s directorial debut, is co-directed by Peter Compton and is produced by Reynold D’Silva, CEO of Silva Screen Music Group.

Abacus MD Jonathan Ford said: “Using rare archival footage, an array of unseen recordings and photographs, eye-witness accounts and stunning location shoots across India, ‘The Beatles and India’ energetically reveals a fascinating journey which was to have a profound impact on The Beatles’ spiritual lives and their music.”

“The universal appeal of the subject has been one of our main aims in...

Anyone who has ever seen even a mildly scary movie knows that, when the choice is presented, you should never go down to the basement. That is probably doubly true for a basement built on a reclaimed marsh. Massimo, the debonair dentist whose increasingly tormented face is in almost every frame of buzzy Venice Film Festival competition entry, America Latina, is in bed with his wife when the bulb in their reading light goes. There are probably new bulbs in the basement, he says. Next morning, he finds time between fillings and bridge work to go down there.

The sight that meets his eyes is so shocking that it is possible — albeit frustrating — to believe that he is incapable of responding in the way any of us imagines we would, that he might even go back upstairs, lock the door and mumble something to his strikingly young wife and teenage daughters about a burst pipe.

It’s been a while since Italian cinema has raised a major enfant terrible, but the country’s film industry firmly believes it has a pair in twin brothers Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo. Hot off a co-writing credit on Matteo Garrone’s “Dogman,” the duo (billed onscreen as The D’Innocenzo Brothers) made a splash and won a prize at last year’s Berlinale with their sophomore feature, the sleek, bleak, nihilistic suburban nightmare “Bad Tales.” Its themes were pretty well-worn, but its darkly chic styling was arresting enough to ensure plenty of chatter trailing their swiftly delivered third film “America Latina.”

Sadly, the hype is unfulfilled by this minor, tricked-out study of extreme midlife crisis, which shows little advancement in the brothers’ storytelling instincts, while underlining their knack for surly mood-building and elegantly sinister imagery. If anything, its thin, oblique blend of arch character study, dreamlike psychodrama and spindly...

Italian brothers Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo make movies about men in isolation, those living on the fringes of society. In a way, their latest feature “America Latina” holds much in common with their 2020 film “Bad Tales,” a Silver Bear winner for Best Screenplay; both stories about living in the suburbs and the horror that can come from separating from society. However, it’s hard for “America Latina” to really feel like a horror film with a plot riddled with clichéd and ill-defined characters. Add in a title that doesn’t make much sense and you have a feature that’s strictly watchable in the moment alone.

Massimo Sisti (Elio Germano) is a high-powered dentist who lives in a massive and architecturally unique house in the small Roman suburb of Latina. He appears to spend his days doing little more than working and spending time with his beautiful wife and two equally beautiful daughters.

Italian twins Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, who made a splash in Berlin last year with “Bad Tales,” in which Elio Germano played the sadistic father in a dysfunctional suburban family, are now in the Venice competition with “America Latina,” in which Germano plays a more tender character.

He’s a morally upright dentist named Massimo Sisti who lives with his wife and beloved daughters in a tranquil, albeit a bit eerie, suburban home. Massimo’s life seems peaceful until one night he goes down to the cellar and something unforeseen takes over.

Ahead of the film’s Venice premiere the directors spoke to Variety about why “it was important to make a warmer, more compassionate film” than “Bad Tales” while continuing to explore the dark side of the human psyche. Edited excerpts.

How did the project originate?

Fabio: We were in Berlin with “Bad Tales” and to ease the pressure...

The country’s box office is still sputtering but Italian cinema is instead “in a state of grace,” as Venice chief Alberto Barbera put it recently as he announced the five features from Italy that are competing for the fest’s Golden Lion. It’s the most he’s ever selected from Italy.

And Barbera is adamant that he didn’t allocate almost one-fourth of Venice’s 21 competition slots to Cinema Italiano “to support our colors at a difficult time.”

“Some years he selects very little from Italy,” notes Barbara Salabè, who is the top Warner Bros. exec in Italy. “But this year Alberto told me: ‘the [Italian] films are good.’”

The Italian contingent on the Lido spans a wide range of cinematic styles, from “Il Buco,” an eclectic film with no dialogue or music about a group of speleologists who, in 1961, discover the world’s second-deepest cave — directed by underground helmer Michelangelo Frammartino,...

Screen profiles the Venice Competition section, which includes new titles from Pedro Almodovar, Paolo Sorrentino, Jane Campion and Pablo Larrain.

Following a physical 2020 edition that triumphantly braved the pandemic, Venice Film Festival (September 1-11) is back on the Lido with a line‑up showcasing major filmmakers including Pedro Almodovar, Paolo Sorrentino, Jane Campion and Pablo Larrain.

America Latina (It-Fr)

Dirs. Damiano D’Innocenzo, Fabio D’Innocenzo

Widely seen as Italian film’s next big things, the 33-year-old twin brothers have so far — among other feats — opened their 2018 debut feature Boys Cry in Berlin’s Panorama section, co-scripted Matteo Garrone’s Dogman, picked...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Ahead of the Curve

In 1990, a 23-year-old named Frances “Franco” Stevens applied for multiple credit cards. When she was approved, she withdrew as much cash as she could from them, and used the money to launch Deneuve, one of the first lesbian magazines in the United States. In a fiction feature-length film, this moment would arrive halfway through the running time, the percussion in the score would tense as we saw an actor convey the fear and hopefulness of someone attempting something bold and risky. A mellow piano would probably announce that this is “the” make or break moment for our heroine. – Jose S. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Bad Tales (D’Innocenzo Brothers)

Amid the litany of horrors the biting little film Bad Tales presents,...

Amid the litany of horrors the biting little film Bad Tales presents, there might be a pinnacle: reading out your middle-school report card to a dining table of your parents’ closest friends. Although young Dennis (Tommaso Di Cola) and Alessia Placido (Giulietta Rebeggiani) have a stack of straight A+’s to unveil, they go through their paces with a haunted, almost inhuman stillness. The camera holds the shot in near-real time, tracking each excruciating second as the kids slowly leave the table, and return, gifted-level grades in trembling hands. But are the film’s writer-directors, twin brothers Fabio and Damiano D’Innocenzo, after our approval in an equally desperate fashion?

Bad Tales is contemporary Italian realism left to corrode and mangle out in the broiling Roman sun. The color palette is tweaked sickly yellow, and the camerawork stays at an austere distance, hovering but never pouncing like the continual buzz of...

Marco Zucca as Mario and Gavino Ledda as Costantino in Salvatore Mereu’s Open Roads: New Italian Cinema highlight Assandira

Two of the highlights of the 2021 virtual edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema are Daniele Luchetti’s The Ties (Lacci), adapted from the novel by co-screenwriter Domenico Starnone, and Francesco Piccolo, which stars Alba Rohrwacher and Luigi Lo Cascio, and Salvatore Mereu’s adaptation of Giulio Angioni’s Assandira, starring Gavino Ledda with Anna König, Marco Zucca, and Corrado Giannetti. Film at Lincoln Center and Istituto Luce Cinecittà’s festival opens with Damiano D'Innocenzo and Fabio D'Innocenzo’s Bad Tales (Favolacce) this Friday.

Salvatore Mereu in Sardinia with his son Francesco Mereu (our translator) in Bologna and Anne-Katrin Titze in New York

In 2013, before the New York Open Roads Italian Cinema luncheon for the Rome delegation of filmmakers, which included Marco Bellocchio for Dormant Beauty and Daniele Cipri for It Was The Son,...

by Nathaniel R

Sophia Loren just won her 7th Best Actress statue at home in Italy

Strangely we never saw any of the trades print a full list of Italy's David Di Donatello nominations this year, always just linking to the Italian site which does not have the list displayed in a way where you can copy and paste it easily. Alas. Hidden Away, a biopic of an obscure artist, led the nominations and came out the big winner too. Bad Tales was not far behind in the nomination count but won only one prize. Netflix's Italian original Rose Island had the third most nominations.

The awards were held a few days ago (oops) so it's past time to share the winners. Sophia Loren's Oscar hopes may not have panned out stateside but she won yet again in Italy for The Life Ahead. A few notes after the jump.

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.

"Something strange happened some weeks ago..." Strand Releasing has debuted a new US trailer for Bad Tales, aka Favolacce in Italian, a dark drama from Italy from the filmmaking brothers Damiano & Fabio D'Innocenzo. This originally premiered at last year's Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay. The dark & strange film is about a few families living out on a limb in the suburbs of Rome. Tensions here can explode at any time; ultimately it's the children who bring about the collapse. But it’s the desperation and repressed rage of the children that will explode and cut through this grotesque facade, with devastating consequences for the entire community. “We want to investigate the communication breakdown in these families, immersed in the stagnancy of sterile routines, where perhaps only tragedies have the capacity to shake things up," said the directors. Bad Tales cast includes Elio Germano,...

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.

After landing on our radars as part of the writing team behind Matteo Garrone’s Dogman, brothers Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo helmed their debut feature Boys Cry and then returned to Berlinale last year to premiere their follow-up Bad Tales, where it won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay. The drama will now come to the U.S. from Strand Releasing, set to play at Open Roads: New Italian Cinema, followed by a release on June 4 at Film at Lincoln Center’s Virtual Cinema, then an expansion on June 11. Ahead of the release, we’re pleased to exclusively debut the new trailer.

Once upon a time, in a small family suburb on the outskirts of Rome, the cheerful heat of the summer camouflages a stifling atmosphere of alienation. From a distance, the families seem normal, but it’s an illusion: in the houses, courtyards and gardens, silence shrouds the subtle sadism of the fathers,...

Italy’s 3zero2 shingle, which is a co-producer of Brendan Foley’s pan-European noir “Body of Water,” is ramping up and expanding into film after bringing on board producer Giuseppe Saccà who shepherded Berlin prizewinning drama “Bad Tales.”

The Milan-based outfit founded and headed by veteran TV exec Piero Crispino has been quietly gaining prominence in Italy in the kids’ space by producing shows for Disney that have travelled internationally, such as “Alex & Co” and “Penny on M.A.R.S.,” but also various types of content for local broadcasters Rai, Mediaset, Sky, Viacom and Discovery.

Now, 3zero2 is looking to grow and broaden its scope with the arrival of Saccà who in March was appointed director of content after he exited Pepito Production, the Rome-based company headed by his father, former Rai head of drama Agostino Saccà, which will be collaborating closely with 3zero2, Crispino said. Besides “Bad Tales,” by Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo,...

Giorgio Diritti’s biopic of an obscure artist “Hidden Away,” Gianni Amelio’s “Hammamet,” about scandal plagued Italian leader Bettino Craxi, and dark drama “Bad Tales” by the D’Innocenzo Brothers lead the race for Italy’s David di Donatello Awards, the country’s top film prizes, for which this year there is no clear frontrunner.

Interestingly, “Hidden Away,” which scooped 15 nominations, and “Bad Tales,” which tallied 13 noms, both star actor Elio Germano. Germano also stars in another film in the Davids race, Netflix Italian Original “The Incredible Story of Rose Island,” which scooped 11 nominations, including one for Matteo Rovere, its producer.

During a virtual press conference Piera Detassis, who heads the David nods, underlined the strong presence this year of women directors, citing Susanna Nicchiarelli’s “Miss Marx,” a biopic of Karl Marx’s proto-feminist daughter Eleanor, and also Emma Dante’s Sicily-set “The Macaluso Sisters,” that are both nominated for film and director.

As Italy’s film and TV industry forges ahead after bearing the brunt of the pandemic in 2020, the Filming Italy — Los Angeles fest, which is a bridgehead between Italy and Hollywood, is pulling out all the stops to drive and promote the country’s restart effort.

After Filming Italy miraculously managed to hold its sister shindig as a physical edition on the island of Sardinia last summer, the upcoming March 18-21 Los Angeles event will be mostly online. But going virtual has just prompted Italian marketing guru Tiziana Rocca, a longtime Italian industry promoter, to double her efforts.

This year the former Taormina Film Festival general manager is serving up twice the number of titles — a selection of more than 50 features, TV skeins, docs and shorts — and a marathon medley of 25 master classes, starting with Edoardo Ponti, director of Oscar-buzzed Sophia Loren-starrer “The Life Ahead,” in conversation with Diane Warren,...

Italian twins Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, who made a splash in Berlin last year with “Bad Tales,” are back on set with dark thriller “America Latina” toplining Elio Germano, who was at Berlin 2020 with two pics: “Bad Tales” and “Hidden Away,” for which he scored a Silver Bear.

Shooting started March 1 on “America Latina.” Its story details are being kept under wraps other than it’s “a love story and like all love stories it’s obviously a thriller,” as the brothers cryptically put it recently speaking to the Italian press.

“Bad Tales,” in which Germano played the sadistic father in a dysfunctional suburban family, won the Berlin 2020 best screenplay award.

“America Latina” is being co-produced by Lorenzo Mieli’s The Apartment, a Fremantle company, and Vision Distribution, which will release the film theatrically in Italy. Le Pacte is also on board and will be distributing France.

Vision Distribution, which...

Superbly shot, the D’Innocenzo brothers’ film focuses on families, neighbourly envy and the feral behaviour of men which culminates in tragedy

The 32-year-old D’Innocenzo brothers, Damiano and Fabio, are not newcomers; they shot a feature called Boys Cry in 2018 and made script contributions to many others, including Matteo Garrone’s Dogman. But this is their breakthrough as writer-directors: Favolacce, translated as Bad Tales, which won the Silver Bear award for screenplay at the Berlin film festival last year.

It is a superbly shot, viscerally acted ensemble drama of group dysfunction among blue-collar families in the Rome suburbs at the tail end of a sweltering summer. The children prepare to go back to school where a sinister science teacher is to have a catastrophic influence. The ingenious premise is that the narrator has discovered a child’s diary with blank pages and continues the journal in fictional form. This film is the result.

“Bad Tales,” a drama written and directed by Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, has been acquired by Strand Releasing for North American distribution. Sold by The Match Factory, the movie world premiered in competition at Berlin in 2019 and won the Silver Bear for best screenplay.

The drama unfolds in the suburbs of Rome and is set over the course of a fateful summer. The film revolves around a seemingly normal family in which the devious deeds of fathers, and the passivity of mothers create a bad influence for their children.

Since opening in Berlin, “Bad Tales” went on to play at a flurry of festivals, notably Karlovy Vary, Zurich, BFI London and El Gouna festivals.

“‘Bad Tales’ is one of the brightest films to come out of the Berlin Film Festival, and the brother’s unique vision definitely makes them auteurs that fit perfectly in line with Strand’s eclectic library,...

Leonora Addio

Following the death of his brother and fellow co-director Vittorio Taviani in 2018, Paolo Taviani continues with his first solo effort Leonora Addio, based on the novella Il Chiodo by Nobel prize winner Luigi Pirandello. Produced through Rai Cinema and Donatella Palermo’s Stemal Entertainment, the project is headlined by Fabrizio Ferracane and Massimo Popolizio. Nicola Piovani provides the score, while regular Taviani Dp Simone Zampagni will lens alongside Paolo Carnera. The Taviani Bros. emerged as one of Italy’s most prominent filmmaking duos in the 1970s, winning the Palme d’Or in 1977 for Padre Padrone and Cannes would be great to them with their 1982 classic The Night of Shooting Stars with the brothers winning the Grand Prize of the Jury and the Ecumenical Jury Prize.…...

Whether a viewer in 1896 or 2020, cinema has always been a dynamic and variable experience. Cinema as an event—as a manifestation of a meeting point between the art of moving images and an audience, big or small—has never fit any one definition, and this last year, so severely disrupted by a global pandemic, has deeply underscored the versatility and resilience of our great love.Our viewing this year, like that of so many, has been strange: compromised, confrontational, escapist, euphoric, painful, revelatory—encompassing all of the reactions one can have to film. How we encountered our favorite movies and most meaningful cinematic experiences of the year was hardly new: A by-now-normal mix of festivals, theatres, various subscription and transactional streaming services, as well as private screener links and gems buried on over-stuffed hard drives. But for most of the year, the communal experience shrunk to living rooms and glowing screens.

The D’Innocenzo brothers’ Bad Tales has snagged the Spirit of the Festival Award, whilst Estephan Wagner and Marianne Hougen-Moraga’s Songs of Repression was crowned Best Documentary. It’s a wrap for the 65th edition of the Cork International Film Festival. The event, the longest-running Irish gathering of its kind, unspooled from 8-15 November and was held virtually. Initially set to be a hybrid festival, the worrying increase in coronavirus cases and the Irish government’s announcement to implement level 3+ restrictions nationwide on 10 November forced the organisers to rethink the entire event and re-plan it digitally. The closing ceremony took place online on 14 November. The winner of this year’s Spirit of the Festival Award was Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo’s Bad Tales, a dark fairy tale set in a southern suburb of Rome, where a small community of families live with their adolescent children, starring Elio Germano in one of the.

Thomas Vinterberg’s “Another Round,” starring Mads Mikkelsen, leads the race for the 33rd European Film Awards, alongside Jan Komasa’s Oscar nominated “Corpus Christi” and Pietro Marcello’s “Martin Eden.” Each film has four nominations.

“Another Round” took nominations for best film, director, actor for Mikkelsen, and screenwriter for Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm. The film won the Audience Award at London Film Festival, and best actor, jointly for the four male leads, at San Sebastian.

“Corpus Christi” will compete for best film, director, actor for Bartosz Bielenia, and screenwriter for Mateusz Pacewicz.

“Martin Eden” is short-listed in the best film category, as well as director, actor for Luca Marinelli (who won best actor with the film at Venice last year), and screenwriter for Marcello and Maurizio Braucci.

Three films scored two nominations each. Burhan Qurbani’s “Berlin Alexanderplatz” competes for best film, and screenwriter for Martin Behnke and Qurbani.

Nominations for feature film and documentary up from five to six.

The nominations for the 2020 European Film Awards have been unveiled, with the size of two key categories extended as a result of the virus crisis.

The categories for best feature and best documentary have each been increased from five to six to offer more exposure to titles and artists impacted by cinema closures and release delays during the pandemic.

Scroll down for full list of nominees

The films nominated in the best European Film category are Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, Berhan Qurbani’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, Jan Komasa’s Corpus Christi,...

The European Film Academy has unveiled the nominations for its 2020 awards, which will take place virtually across a series of online events December 8-12.

Leading the way are Another Round, Corpus Christi, and Martin Eden which have four nominations apiece, including for European Film 2020. Joining them in that main category are Berlin Alexanderplatz, The Painted Bird, and Undine.

Nominated for European Documentary are: Acasa, My Home; Collective; Gunda; Little Girl; Saudi Runaway; and The Cave.

In the European Director category, joining Thomas Vinterberg for Another Round, Jan Komasa for Corpus Christi, and Pietro Marcello for Martin Eden are Agnieszka Holland for Charlatan, Francois Ozon for Summer Of 85, and Maria Sødahl for Hope.

The European Actress nominees are: Paula Beer (Udine); Natasha Berezhnaya (Dau. Natasha); Andrea Bræin Hovig (Hope); Ane Dahl Torp (Charter); Nina Hoss (My Little Sister); and Marta Nieto (Mother).

Up for European actor: Bartosz Bielenia (Corpus Christi...

The film by brothers Fabio and Damiano D'Innocenzo has gone home from the gathering with the top prize, also scooping the Best Director Award in the official section. The 35th edition of the Mostra de València – Cinema del Mediterrani came to a close on 30 October with the handing out of its trophies. The movie that emerged triumphant was the Italian production Bad Tales, which went home with the top prize: the Golden Palm for Best Film in one of the official sections. In charge of weighing up the films in competition was a jury chaired by author Elisa Ferrer. Said jury stated that the film deserved the trophy “for its cleverly provocative representation of the eternal conflict between generations in the context of a society that is breaking down”. In addition, the film picked up the Award for Best Director, an acknowledgement of the...

The sense of foreboding is unpalatable in the D’Innocenzos brothers Bad Tales. The wait for why there is such a festering malaise in this unnamed suburb of Rome that the film is set in is intoxicating but eventually becomes quite frustrating, as the film draws near to its 98 minute close.

We are witness to unsavoury events throughout that flag why a lot of the child characters are non-vocal around the adults, but we are also left starved of further depth as to why things continue to happen the way they do. In overplaying the subtle, unspoken card, the D’Innocenzos miss delivering some crucial conclusions and leave other sub plots dangling without consequence. On the other hand, it could be argued that what is left to the imagination is more potent than anything depicted on screen, which is why reviewing Bad Tales feels like a troubling conundrum too – it is subjective in the extreme.

Exclusive: Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival (October 23-30), the Middle East’s first sizeable Covid-era physical film event, has set Peter Webber (Girl With A Pearl Earring) as jury president.

Gérard Depardieu will receive the festival’s Career Achievement Award and actor Said Taghmaoui (La Haine) will received the Omar Sharif Award.

Hannibal Rising and Emperor director Webber told us: “It has been a difficult year for many and especially those of us in the film industry, yet it is important to remember that it is our work that has been keeping so many people entertained, inspired and engaged as they were trapped in their homes or struggling during the biggest pandemic in living memory.

“Therefore it’s a great delight and a privilege to be invited to be president of the jury at El Gouna Film Festival, a festival that will celebrate the importance of film at this crucial time.

Pixar’s ‘Soul’ and Chloe Zhao’s ‘Nomadland’ are two of four cinema-only titles.

The BFI London Film Festival has unveiled the full programme for its 2020 physical-virtual hybrid edition, with 58 features playing to audiences across the UK from October 7-18.

Pixar’s Soul and Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland starring Frances McDormand join Steve McQueen’s festival opener Mangrove and Francis Lee’s closer Ammonite as the four cinema-only titles, playing at select venues across the country.

Scroll down for the full lineup of features

A further 10 titles will play both in cinemas and via the festival’s online platform. These...

This year’s selection will be announced over two waves to account for pandemic conditions.

The first 32 features up for the 2020 European Films Awards has been announced with a second wave of “pandemic year” titles due to be revealed in September.

Scroll down for first selection of films

The titles include Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History Of David Copperfield and Viggo Mortensen’s Falling as well as Berlinale award-winners Undine, by Christian Petzold; Hidden Away, by Giorgio Diritti; Bad Tales, by the D’Innocenzo Brothers; Dau. Natasha, by Ilya Khrzhanovskiy and Jekaterina Oertel; and Delete History, by Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern.

12 features and four shorts selected for the international line-up.

Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival (Gff) has signalled that it is pushing on with plans for a physical event this autumn amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and announced the line-up of 12 international features due to play at its fourth edition running October 23 to 31.

A number of the selections will physically world premiere at the Autumn festivals, including Thomas Vinterberg’s Cannes 2020 label title Another Round (Toronto), and Venice Giornate Degli Autori titles Oasis and The Whaler Boy.

A number of Berlinale 2020 titles are in the mix including Special Silver Bear winner Delete History,...

Amka Films, the Swiss indie shingle founded by prominent producer Tiziana Soudani – who sadly passed away in January – is carrying on its activities under a trio of women led by her daughter Amel Soudani.

The company is known for its involvement in prizewinning films by prominent directors from nearby Italy, such as Alice Rohrwacher (“The Wonders”), Silvio Soldini (“Bread and Tulips) and Fabio and Damiano D’Innocenzo (“Bad Tales”) as well as by emerging talents in Switzerland and Africa.

Among Amka projects in the pipeline is high-profile doc “L’Afrique Des Femmes,” selected for the lineup of the Locarno fest’s The Films After Tomorrow initiative that will award cash prizes to works-in-progress forced to halt production due to the pandemic.

The long-gestating doc portraying strong resourceful women from different African nations and social classes was close to completion when the coronavirus crisis struck, blocking the editing process, which was being done in Italy.

The D’Innocenzo brothers’ film won five awards in all, Matteo Garrone’s took home six, Pierfrancesco Favino and Jasmine Trinca were named best actor and actress. On the same day that Italian film lost its greatest musical composer Ennio Morricone, the sector is trying to raise itself up, after months of Coronavirus-related inactivity and uncertainty, by celebrating the very best of the talent among its ranks. And it was the younger nominees who triumphed this year at the 74th edition of the Silver Ribbons, the awards ceremony of which took place yesterday evening, dedicated to the late master, at Rome’s National Museum of 21st Century Arts (Maxxi), attended solely by the prize-winners and unfolding in line with health and safety guidelines. The 2020 Nastro for Best Film went to Bad Tales, by the 31-year-old twins Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, which bagged five trophies in all, out of its nine nominations: aside.

While the Venice Film Festival is poised to lead the way among top-tier film events a trio of smaller Italian summer fests with international standing is now also set to hold physical editions prior to September when the Lido plans to take its post-pandemic plunge.

Restrictions are rapidly lifting in Italy, where the coronavirus curve is finally flattening after the longest lockdown in Europe. Starting Wednesday Italy is allowing travelers from the 25 other members of the Schengen visa-free travel area that covers much of Europe to enter the country with no restrictions.

And, along with Venice topper Alberto Barbera, several other Italian fest chiefs are busy trying to rise to the challenge of not cancelling their events or making them go entirely digital.

Italy’s first post-lockdown shindig, barring complications, will be the annual Ischia Global Film and Music Fest, renamed “Ischia Smart 2020” this year, and set to be held...

Festival to screen 16 films at nearly 100 theatres across the Czech Republic.

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) is to screen 16 films at 96 cinemas across the Czech Republic as an alternative to its annual event, which was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The selection, titled Kviff at Your Cinema, comprises features that have debuted at festivals since last autumn and include the European premieres of three titles: Zeina Durra’s Luxor, Fernanda Valadez’s Identifying Features, and Maite Alberdi’s The Mole Agent.

The films will screen from July 3-11, the original dates of the festival. Each of the...

Sky Studios is teaming with popular Italian musician and rapper Salmo to develop “Blocco 181” (working title), an in-house TV production.

Salmo will serve as creative and music producer of “Blocco 181” and will also star in the series, which will mark the Italian rap artist’s first TV project.

The creative hub Red Joint Film, which is led by partners Paolo Vari and David Fischer, is collaborating with Sky Studios to develop the project. The series is being produced in-house at Sky Studios in Italy with Nils Hartmann and his team. Now at script stage, “Blocco 181” is expected to start shooting in 2021.

“Blocco 181” will be set in the multi-ethnic communities on the outskirts of Milan, and will revolve around themes of love, generational conflicts, female emancipation and, above all, power struggles.

“With this series I would like to keep the bar high and go beyond, even while telling life in the suburbs,...

Italian state broadcaster Rai, the country’s long-time major film and TV industry driver, is seeking to placate concerns being voiced by the country’s producers as it navigates the coronavirus crisis amid mounting criticism and shrinking resources.

As the pandemic paralyzes the economy in Italy — which at present is suffering the world’s highest coronavirus death toll, at upwards of 16,500 — the mammoth pubcaster, which has more than 13,000 employees, has revealed that its long-gestating organizational overhaul and 2020 budget approval have been frozen.

Meanwhile, Rai’s ratings are oscillating as it scrambles to reprogram slots of its more than 20 channels amid appeals to provide the country’s captive audience in lockdown more “culture” and “quality” programming, as veteran film director Pupi Avati (“Il Signor Diavolo”) put it in a recent open letter to national daily Corriere della Sera.

In another appeal to Rai’s top management, last week Italy’s indie documentary producers org.