The
Italian Contemporary Film Festival, presented by IC Savings today announced the lineup for the second edition of the ICFF at a media event held at the Ritz Carlton Hotel Toronto, a major sponsor of the festival.
Artistic Director, Cristiano de Florentiis and Managing Director, Maurizio Magnifico unveiled an exciting and eclectic slate of 62 Italian and Italian-themed films and shorts that will screen at the TIFF Bell Lightbox and the Royal Cinema in Toronto, and at AMC Interchange in Vaughan, from June 26 – July 6. Building on the success of the 2012 inaugural edition, the expanded 11-day event will showcase the best in new Italian cinema from around the world and Canada, including 24 feature film premieres.
This year’s slate, 50% larger than the inaugural edition, includes a wide array of genres – from comedies and searing political dramas – to documentaries and shorts, and covers a variety of issues. Other highlights include Opening and Closing Night parties, and international and local guests who will present their films and treat audiences to post-screening Q&A sessions.
In addition, the ICFF is expanding to Montreal this year with a selection of films to screen in collaboration with La Cinématheque québecoise, from June 26 – June 30.
The festival kicks off on June 26 with Italian box office hit, BENVENUTO PRESIDENTE, a political comedy directed by Riccardo Milani. The opening night film stars Claudio Bisio (Oscar® winner Mediterraneo) as a modest, good-hearted librarian and avid fisherman who bears the famous name of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Through a series of voting glitches, “Peppino” finds himself mistakenly elected President of Italy, and thus leaves his small mountain village to embark on a colourful and fantastic adventure in Rome. Before long, he becomes a maverick statesman who wins over the disheartened nation with his enthusiasm, goodness, and honest nature. But behind the scenes, political machinations are afoot.
ICFF SELECT HIGHLIGHTS
SIBERIAN EDUCATION (Educazione Siberiana) North American Premiere
Director: Gabriele Salvatores
Cast: John Malkovich, Peter Stormare, Arnas Fedaravicius, Eleanor Tomlinson
Country: Italy
Running Time: 103 min.
Canadian Distributor: Mongrel Media
The story of a gang of children growing up in a lawless community in a forgotten corner of the former Soviet Union, SIBERIAN EDUCATION follows two best friends who gradually become fierce enemies as they find themselves on opposite sides of the strict code of honour of the ‘honest criminal’ brotherhood. An adaptation of the Nicolai Lilin autobiography of the same name, this thriller stars John Malkovich as a colorful Russian godfather.
THE LAST LEOPARD: PORTRAIT OF GOFFREDO LOMBARDO
(L’Ultimo Gattopardo: Ritratto Di Goffredo Lombardo) North American Premiere
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Country: Italy
Running time: 75 min.
Legendary Italian film producer Goffredo Lombardo is one of the most celebrated producers in Italian cinema (The Leopard, Rocco and His Brothers, Il Bidone). The son of Gustavo, a pioneer of Italian cinema and founder of the Titanus Film Company, Goffredo helped to give international prestige to the Italian film industry after the Second World War. Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore (Oscar® winner Cinema Paradiso), THE LAST LEOPARD pays tribute to Goffredo Lombardo through archival footage and interviews with top actors and filmmakers.
TSUNAMI TOUR International Premiere
Director: Gianluca Santoro and Chiara Burtulo
Country: Italy
Documentary
Running Time: 70 min
“Beppe” Grillo is an Italian comedian, actor, blogger and political activist. As founder of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, he toured Italy in a camper van to hold rallies and meet the Italian public, winning 25% of the 2013 general election. This documentary gives an exclusive look at Grillo’s tour across the country.
DIAZ: DON’T CLEAN UP THIS BLOOD (Diaz – Non pulire questo sangue)
Writer/Director: Daniele Vicari
Cast: Elio Germano, Jennifer Ulrich, Claudio Santamaria
Country: Italy
Running Time: 120 min
Canadian Distributor: Mongrel Media
This searing political drama retraces the seminal events which took place in the Diaz school raid during Genoa’s violent G8 Summit in July 2001. Diaz is named after the temporarily vacant city-center school used by protest-groups as a makeshift base and sleeping quarters during the economic summit. The police stormed the school and brutally attacked young men and women from all over Europe for two hours.
REALITY
Director: Matteo Garrone (Gomorrah)
Cast: Aniello Arena, Loredana Simioli and Claudia Gerini
Country: Italy/France
Running Time: 115 min.
Canadian Distributor: Mongrel Media
Acclaimed director Matteo Garrone follows his award-winning crime epic Gomorrah with this dark comedy about the impact of contemporary media and the nature of fame. Winner of the 2012 Cannes International Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, REALITY follows Luciano, a Neapolitan fishmonger who becomes obsessed with landing a role on the Italian version of the hugely popular reality TV series, Big Brother.
BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO
Director: Peter Strickland
Cast: Toby Jones, Tonia Sotiropoulou, Cosimo Fusco, Antonio Mancino.
Country: UK
Running Time: 92 min
Canadian Distributor: Films We Like
Compared to David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, this smash hit at the Edinburgh Film Festival pays tribute to Italian horror master, Mario Bava. In this sinister and moody thriller, Gilderoy, a timid English sound engineer (Toby Jones – Hitchcock, Infamous), finds himself working with a group of mysterious filmmakers on a low budget horror film in 1976 Italy. Immersed in a Kafkaesque world, he slowly begins to lose his mind.
ITAKER (Itaker – Vietato agli Italiani) Canadian Premiere
Director: Toni Trupia
Cast: Michele Placido, Francesco Scianna, Monica Birladeanu, Tiziano Talarico
Country: Italy-Romania
Running time: 98 min
Guest in attendance: Actor Francesco Scianna (Baarìa)
“Itaker” is a derogatory German expression generally used to refer to emigrant workers from Italy in the sixties. Benito (Francesco Scianna), a penniless Italian in search of a better life, accompanies Pietro (Tiziano Talarico), a nine year old orphan to Germany in search of the boy’s father. Set in 1962 in the world of Italian emigrant workers, Benito discovers what it means to be a father, despite himself.
SHUN LI AND THE POET (Io Sono Li) North American Premiere
Writer/Director: Andrea Segre
Country: Italy/France
Cast: Zhao Tao, Rade Serbedzija, Marco Paolini, Roberto Citran, Giuseppe Battiston
Running Time: 98 min.
Set in Chioggia, a small village on the Venetian lagoon, SHUN LI AND THE POET is a poetic and moving film about the fragile friendship between a shy Chinese waitress (Zhao Tao) and a middle-aged Slavic fisherman (Rade Serbedzija). Zhao was named Best Actress at Italy’s David di Donatello Awards for her role, and director Andrea Segre received the London Film Festival’s Satyajit Ray Award for his first feature.
UNA DOMENICA NOTTE International Premiere
Director: Giuseppe Marco Albano
Cast: Antonio Andrisani, Francesca Faiella, Ernesto Mahieux
Country: Italy
Running Time: 90 min.
Antonio is a 46 year-old director of horror movies whose dream of making it big has all but faded. Married with a young son, and then divorced, he lives in a small town in Puglia where he goes about his daily life, frustrated by his inability to raise financing for his projects. When he decides to produce a new low budget film on his own, he casts willing residents of the town in this charming, warm-hearted film.
HOPEFUL NOTES Canadian Premiere
Director: Valerio Zanoli
Cast: Walter Nudo, Colin Ross, Ian Poland
Country: USA
Running Time: 94 min.
Guest in Attendance: Walter Nudo (Montreal native, Italian superstar)
This heartwarming and inspirational story follows Alex (Walter Nudo), an Italian engineer working in Russia. At the end of his contract, Alex coincidentally meets Dima, a child who is a cancer patient in a local hospital. Dima introduces Alex to the other young patients of his ward. Moved by their plight, Alex reconsiders his future to volunteer as a piano player in the ward.
THE LOST WORLD CUP (Il Mondial Dimenticato) North American Premiere
Directors: Lorenzo Garzella, Filippo Macelloni
Country: Italy-Argentina
Running time: 95 min
At the height of the Second World War, the Jewish Hungarian Otz, a count with an avid love of football, then living in exile in Patagonia, decides to approach FIFA about staging a possible World Cup away from the chaos engulfing Second World War Europe. This film finally presents the true story of the 1942 World Soccer Championship, the story never acknowledged by the official sports organizations, shrouded for decades in legend. The outcome of the game is finally revealed.
OUTING – ACCIDENTAL FIANCÉS (Outing – Fidanzati per sbaglio)
Director: Matteo Vicino International Premiere
Cast: Nicolas Vaporidis, Massimo Ghini, Giulia Michelini
Country: Italy
Running Time: 96 min
(Presented in collaboration with Toronto Inside Out LGBT Festival)
Guests in Attendance: Actor Nicolas Vaporidis and Producer Andrea Iervolino
Outing is a comedy starring two childhood friends from Puglia: Federico who toils away at menial jobs, and Riccardo, a fashion designer living in Milan whose job as a sales clerk is far from his dream. Once they find out about a program offering loans in support of entrepreneurial activities in the region of Puglia, the two friends decide to go into business together. Unaware that the loan was limited to common law couples, the two friends pretend to be a gay couple in order to qualify so that Riccardo can fulfill his dream of opening a fashion house.
I’M NOT PAYING (E Io non pago) International Premiere
Director: Alessandro Capone
Country: Italy
Cast: Maurizio Mattioli, Jerry Calà, Maurizio Casagrande
Running Time: 108 min
Guests in Attendance: Actor Jerry Calà, Actress Valeria Marini and Producer, Andrea Iervolino
I’M NOT PAYING is a comedy about Italian tax evasion and fraud.
THE SON DID IT (È Stato Il Figlio)
Director: Daniele Ciprì
Cast: Toni Servillo, Giselda Volodi, Alfredo Castro, Fabrizio Falco
Country: Italy
Running Time: 90 min.
A prize winner at the 2012 Venice Film Festival, Daniele Ciprì’s feature directorial debut is a satirical comedy charting the life of the dysfunctional Ciraulo family. Set in the Mafia dominated South, it stars Toni Servillo as the head of a clan struggling to survive in the crumbling ruins of a housing estate on the outskirts of Palermo, Sicily. A family tragedy threatens to make them rich with compensation money, but merely sows the seeds for further problems in this adaptation of the Robert Alajmo novel.
REAL GANGSTERS Canadian Premiere
Director: Frank D’Angelo
Cast: Nick Manuso, Michael Paré, Steven Bauer, Robert Loggia, John Savage, Margot Kidder
Country: Canada
Running Time: 87 min.
Talent in Attendance: Frank D’Angelo, Nick Mancuso, Robert Loggia
The Lo Giacomo family is one of the most successful crime syndicates in New York City. Run by cousins Vincent (Nick Mancuso) and Jack (Frank D’Angelo), these two men maintain control of their dangerous extended family and volatile business ventures by very different means. Vincent always tries to keep the peace and grow the family into a billion dollar empire while Jack enforces his code of duty and honor with brutal finality.
THE RESURRECTION OF TONY GITONE
Director: Jerry Ciccoritti
Cast: Alvaro D’Antonio, Louis Di Bianco, John Cassini, Fab Filippo, Ron Lea, Nick Mancuso, Paula Rivera, Michael Miranda, Tony Nappo, Tony Nardi
Country: Canada
Running Time: 87 min.
Talent in Attendance: Jerry Ciccoritti, Nick Mancuso, Tony Nardi
Shot in Toronto’s Little Italy, this tale of life, love, friendship and roots, directed, written and produced by Jerry Ciccoritti, showcases an impressive ensemble cast of actors in the Italian community.
LE GUETTEUR (The Lookout) North American Premiere
Director: Michele Placido
Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Matthieu Kassovitz, Violante Placido
Country: France/Belgium/Italy
Running time: 89 min.
Canadian Distributor: E1
Set in Paris and its surrounding area, this tightly wound crime thriller is directed by renowned Italian actor-director Michele Placido (Vallanzasca, Romanzo Criminale) and stars Daniel Auteuil as a detective hunting for the marksman who foiled the plan to catch a notorious team of bank robbers.
VIVA L’ITALIA International Premiere
Director: Massimiliano Bruno
Cast: Michele Placido, Alessandro Gassman, Ambra Angiolini, Raoul Bova
Country: Italy
Running Time: 100 min.
A comedy portraying Italy in all its contradictions, VIVA L’ITALIA revolves around Michele Spagnolo, a corrupt politician who has a stroke while in bed with a showgirl whose career he has promised to promote. He is affected in the part of his brain that controls inhibitions, which leads Michele to start telling the truth about everything and everyone, eventually making him a loose cannon for himself and his family, as well as for his political party.
DOCUMENTARIES (free screenings)
ANTIGONE
Director: Antonio D’Alfonso
Running time: 87 min
A modern adaptation of the Greek tragedy written by Sophocles, has each character speaking in a different language
LETTER TWO
Director: Tony Nardi
Running Time: 2 hours
An examination of an ‘actor-less’ theatre culture in Canada at the hands of ‘director’s theatre’, in which, increasingly, a tradition of over-trained actors and under-trained directors is encouraged.
ZIA AND FRIENDS World Premiere
Director: Angela Bianchi
Running time: 43 minutes
ZIA AND FRIENDS documents the lives of a few residents living at a long term care facility in Toronto. Most of them have dementia and spend their days eating, sleeping and sitting around the nursing station as they wait for God. They’ve lost track of time.
AWARDS
Eleven days of screenings and receptions will be capped with the Closing Night Ceremony on July 6, 2013 at 7:00 PM at the TIFF Bell Lightbox where the ICFF will announce the winners of three awards.
PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD
The People’s Choice Award will be chosen by the audience, which will cast ballots for Best Feature. The winner will be announced at the Awards Ceremony.
ANGELA BALDASSARRE AWARD
The Toronto Film Critics Association will present the Angela Baldassarre Award to the “Best Film” of the ICFF in memory of Angela, a gifted Toronto film critic who lost her battle with cancer on November 15, 2007. Angela was a member of the TFCA.
ICFF SHORT FILM AWARD
This year the festival is introducing the inaugural Best Short Film Award, which will be chosen by the Audience. It is sponsored by the ICFF and carries a $1000 cash prize.
TICKETS
Tickets for all venues are now on sale online or in person at TIFF Bell Lightbox Box Office, 350 King Street West, (416) 599-8433, and as at presenting theatres and at the ICFF headquarter (416) 893-3966, info@icff.ca
For the complete film line-up and ticket information please visit: http://www.icff.ca