Stand Italian films in competition at Venice Film Festival which will open its doors on August 30th: good news for our cinema?
Let’s see them. The opening film (which replaces Challengersby Luca Guadagnino, withdrawn by American producers, Amazon, due to the actors’ strike that would have prevented star Zendaya from being present) is Commander by Edoardo De Angelis.
Played by Pierfrancesco FavinoMassimiliano Rossi, Johan Heldenbergh, Arturo Muselli, Giuseppe Brunetti, Paolo Bonacelli, and recounts a true act of heroism and humanity accomplished by Salvatore Todaro (Favino) commander of the Cappellini submarine of the Regia Marina at the beginning of the Second World War.
Pierfrancesco Favino is the Commander.
An act of heroism
In October 1940, while sailing in the Atlantic, Todaro faces an armed merchant ship traveling with its lights off and sinks it with cannon fire. The Commander then takes a decision destined to make history: to save the 26 Belgian castaways and land them in the nearest safe port, as required by the law of the sea.
The youngest of the competing Italian directors is certainly Pietro Castellitto, son of Sergio and Margaret Mazzantini, which he brings to the Lido Aeneasplayed by himself. Enea chases after the myth that he bears in his name and does so to feel alive in a dead and decadent age. She accompanies Valentino (Giorgio Guasco Guarascio), like him moved by an irrepressible vitality. A raid in one Rome populated by problematic families, unscrupulous young entrepreneurs, drug traffickersclubbers colluded with the mafia and a beautiful girl (Benedetta Porcaroli).
Finally dawn by Saverio Costanzo with Lily James, Rebecca AntonaciJoe Keery, Rachel Sennott, Alba Rohrwacher and Willem Dafoe is the story of the loss of innocence by a young commoner, a simple girl, engaged to a wealthy man, an aspiring actress (Antonaci), who spends a day and a night in the Fascinating, but actually cynical and cruel Cinecittà of the Fifties. In the background the tragic story of Wilma Montesi, found dead in ’53 on a beach outside Rome, a case that attracted the attention of the Italian media for the involvement of prominent figures in the investigation. One of the many mysteries of Italy, still unsolved.
Lubo by Giorgio Rights with Franz RogowskyChristophe Sermet, Valentina Bellè, Noemi Besedes, Cecilia Steiner, Joel Basman, Filippo Giulini, Alessandro Zappella is set in Switzerland in 1939 and is taken from the novel The sower by Mario Cavatore. Lubo Moser (Rogowski) is a jenisch – nomadic ethnic group of gypsies persecuted by the Nazis in Germany and discriminated against in Switzerland – and lives traveling with his wife and children. War is about to break out and Lubo is called up for military service in the Swiss army to defend the border. But while he is at the front, his children are kidnapped by the government under a national re-education program.
Matteo Garrone is the author of I captaina Homeric fairy tale that narrates the journey of two young people, Seydou and Moussa (Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall), who depart from Dakar, Senegal, towards Europe, in search of a better future. Their exodus is shown in its most total desolation and ruthlessness, passing through the pitfalls of the desert, the horrors of detention centers in Libya and the dangers of the sea.
Italian films in Venice: Stefano Sollima’s dystopian Rome
In the end Slowly by Stefano Sollima, again with Pierfrancesco Favino, but also Toni Servillo, Valerio Mastandrea, Adriano Giannini, Gianmarco Franchini, Francesco Di Leva is a dystopian film set in Rome: while fires surround the capital, Manuel, sixteen years old, tries to enjoy life as much as he can while taking care of his elderly father. Victim of blackmail, he goes to a party to take some photos of a mysterious individual but, feeling cheated, he decides to run away. He thus finds himself chased by blackmailers determined to eliminate the inconvenient witness.
There is everything in this unprecedented national selection: genre cinema (Sollima), the Italian period blockbuster (Commander And Finally dawn), the contemporary film about youth (Roman, you can’t escape from there) written, directed and acted by the young Castellitto, the film on the great issues of the present (Garrone) and the one on our recent history (Rights, but also Costanzo with the allusion to the Montesi case). But if there is a common thread running through all six films in competition, it is that they are all films directed by men. And that, perhaps with the sole exclusion of Finally dawn (the “All About Eve” relationship between peplum diva Lily James and the young local extra) are all male stories, films from which the feminine has been erased, obliterated, forgotten, removed.
The part of the great cultural institutions
But can one of the most important festivals in the world support such a decision? Perhaps the six Italian films in competition (we are waiting to see them) will do a good service to Italian cinema, but for the moment their selection represents a vulnerability to Italian cinema. The objection “we haven’t found any good films directed by women” is inadmissible.
What was done why female directors train, grow, become aware of their own voice, make their way in the difficult world of production, are they listened to, their ideas accepted, their films made? What did Venice do? Yet the Ministry of Culture, which helps finance many of the films produced in our country, gives higher scores to works directed by women and employing female workers. But that’s not enough. If the big cultural institutions don’t do their part. A radical change in the mentality of those in charge of thinking about the cinema to come is necessary. Perhaps starting from Venice 81.
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