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From Venice to Moscow 2016
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March 01-06
Illuzion 
 On March 1st, the 7th Italian film festival "From Venice to Moscow" kicked off at "Illusion". Over the course of six days it will present a selection of contemporary Italian films picked from the official program of the 72nd Venice film festival, "Horizons" sections and out-of-competition.
Moscow viewers will see eight best feature films and one documentary film: an opening film "Per amor vostro" by Giuseppe Gaudino; a documentary "Harry's Bar" telling a story of how this place became a legend and personally brought to Moscow by producer Giovanni Cassinelli and director, filmmaker and photographer Carlotta Cerquetti; a mystery drama "A Bigger Splash" starring Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton; Piero Messina's drama "L'Attesa" with amazing Juliette Binoche.
The event is organized by the 72 Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica, Italian Cultural Institute in Moscow supported by The Embassy of Italy in Russia.
"There is a long, historical connection between Italy and Russia in the field of cinema," Venice Film Festival managing director Luigi Cuciniello said in an interview. "There was always a strong link of artistic influences despite huge political differences. I feel that both countries have always shared a similar vision of the artistic value of cinema." "Bringing the films to Moscow is an attempt to spread the news about new Italian film," Cuciniello said. "All over the world Italian cinema is known for the successes of the 1950s and '60s - neorealism, the films of Visconti, Fellini, this great tradition. We want the festival to stress that nowadays we also have many great new directors," Cucinello said. "This is one of the missions of the Italian Film Festival here, to find distributors and audiences for these films all over the world." "Compared to Cannes and Berlin, the Venice Film Festival is about new talent," said Naum Kleiman, the manager of the Moscow State Central Cinema Museum. "We want to lend a helping hand to directors who may find it hard to get their films shown here."
Part of the appeal of the festival for lovers of cinema is the participation of actors and directors flown in from Italy to give talks and discussions on their entries. The guests of the festival in 2016 will be producer Giovanni Cassinelli and director, filmmaker and photographer Carlotta Cerquetti, director Alberto Caviglia and director, writer and producer Isabella Sandri, actor and singer Massimiliano Gallo; director, writer and set decorator Giuseppe Mario Gaudino whose cinema mainly focuses on social alienation and cultural displacement; actress Roberta Mattei.
The films will be demonstrated in Italian with Russian subtitles.
Festival Films
The Opening Film
Per amor vostro. Drama. Italy, France 2015, 110 min. Directed by Giuseppe Gaudino. Starring: Valeria Golino, Massimiliano Gallo, Adriano Giannini, Elisabetta Mirra, Salvatore Cantalupo. Awards and festivals: Venice Film Festival - Volpi Cup and Pasinetti Award for Best Actress. Anna was a confident and brave child. She is now an "indolent" woman who stopped seeing what was really happening in her family twenty years ago, preferring not to take sides, suspended between Good and Evil. For the love of her three sons and her family, she has let her life to be slowly extinguished. Until, finally, she convinced herself to be "worthless". Her existence is so gray that she no longer sees colors, although at work - she is a prompter at a tv studio - she is well-liked and popular. Anna has innate gifts in helping others, but she does not use them on herself. She can never find the words or the opportunity to help herself. Eventually, after years of insecurity, when she is finally able to get a stable job, she begins to free herself from this condition. Even from her husband, whom she finally decides to leave. From that day on she tackles the many fears that had lain dormant over the years, such as gazing out from the balcony overlooking the seafront in her city, Naples. Because she knows that the sea is her oracle. The sea, the only thing that has not yet been contaminated by her gray gaze.
Films:
 A Bigger Splash. Drama / Mystery / Thriller. Italy, France 2015, 120 min. Directed by Luca Guadagnino. Starring: Dakota Johnson, Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Lily McMenamy. Awards and festivals: Venice Film Festival - Soundtrack Stars Award, Les Arcs European Film Festival - participation. In "A Bigger Splash", the lives of a high profile couple, a famous rock star and a filmmaker, vacationing and recovering on the idyllic sun-drenched and remote Italian island of Pantelleria are disrupted by the unexpected visit of an old friend and his daughter - creating a whirlwind of jealousy, passion and, ultimately, danger for everyone involved. Continuing to experiment with extreme emotional choices motivated by sexual desire, director Luca Guadagnino follows up his critically acclaimed I Am Love with a far less satisfying study of seduction and destruction in A Bigger Splash. This remake of Jacques Deray's cult 1969 film La Piscine, which starred Alain Delon, Romy Schneider and Jane Birkin, vaunts an equally cool and desirable cast (Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes, Matthias Schoenaerts and Dakota Johnson) and an updated role for the female lead, who is now a very proactive rock star. But the film feels empty and intellectualized at the core, where it should feel powerfully emotional. Sophisticated shooting, abundant nudity and Johnson’s presence in the naughty nymphet role should generate initial box office for U.S. distributor Fox Searchlight, but it's a far cry from, say, the realm of Only Lovers Left Alive, in which Swinton scored as a rock'n'roll vampire. The action is set on the volcanic island of Pantelleria, far south off Italy’s coast and currently the landing point for numerous boat people. David Kajganich's screenplay reminds us of the drama of these desperate migrants, who are glimpsed in passing, confined to mesh cages in front of the police station or hiding amid the island's dark rocks, and they are tentatively drawn into the story’s ambiguous ending as scapegoats for the rich and careless.
Bagnoli Jungle. Drama. Italy 2015, 100 min. Directed by Antonio Capuano. Starring: Luigi Attrice, Antonio Casagrande, Marco Grieco, Angela Pagano. Bagnoli. Among the ruins of Ilva, the great factory of progress in the past and today a desolate indictment, Giggino, Antonio and Marco move, live and survive. Three generations that, throughout the three chapters, only occasionally cross paths. Three characters that one at a time encounter street musicians and house painters, nuns and gangsters, half naked or desperate housewives, fat shopkeepers and starving migrants. And also rappers, runaways, normal people at a protest… Without any order or sense. Only those who remain where history erased their paths will find themselves in a steppe, or in a desolate, contaminated and empty jungle.
Banat (Il Viaggio). Drama. Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia 2015, 82 min. Directed by Adriano Valerio. Starring: Edoardo Gabbriellini, Elena Radonicich, Stefan Velniciuc, Piera Degli Esposti, Ovanes Torosian. Awards and festivals: Venice Film Festival - participation, Busan International Film Festival - participation. Bari, a city caught in the relentless economic crisis. Ivo is an agronomist, but the lack of opportunities pushes him to accept a job in the fertile region of Banat in Romania. Clara has just ended a relationship and is about to lose her job at the Bari harbor. Ivo and Clara meet by chance and seem to immediately understand each other. They spend only one night together before Ivo's departure, but that is enough to create a bond and wanting to meet again. When Clara visits him in Romania, they fall in love. But is exile their only way to happiness?
 L'Attesa. Drama. Italy, France 2015, 100 min. Directed by Piero Messina. Starring: Juliette Binoche, Giorgio Colangeli, Lou de Laâge, Domenico Diele, Antonio Folletto. Awards and festivals: Venice Film Festival - Special Mention, Leoncino d'Oro Agiscuola Award; London International Film Festival - participation. A mother unexpectedly meets her son's fiancée at a villa in Sicily and gets to know her as she waits for her son to arrive.
Hollywood Reporter writes: "In Sicilian director Piero Messina's The Wait (L’Attesa), French actress Juliette Binoche looks more like a matronly Mediterranean mother than ever, somewhere between Mamma Roma's Anna Magnani and Greek icon Katina Paxinou, the matriarch in Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers. She's the main attraction in this very loose Pirandello adaptation about a grieving mother, holed up in a cavernous Sicilian villa, who can't bring herself to tell her son's French girlfriend that he's died. Messina, Paolo Sorrentino's assistant director on Oscar winner The Great Beauty, occasionally indulges too much in stylistic superfluities and isn't the subtlest of directors, something immediately clear when considering that he's telling a story about a death and the titular wait for a return (or resurrection) that's roughly set over the period between Good Friday and Easter Monday. But especially in Catholic countries, this modern-day melodrama, a Venice competition premiere, should find pockets of believers. In the film's impressive opening shot, the camera spirals around a wooden statue of a crucified Christ, apparently floating against a black backdrop, before arriving at the bottom, where, suddenly, the head of a nun comes into view. A cut then reveals that we’re actually inside a dark church, where a funeral's being held. The complex camera choreography is clearly a Sorrentinian influence but the cut feels like something of a "gotcha!" moment; what's missing here is what makes these moments work for Sorrentino, namely the fact that his stylistic flourishes always help advance the story or deepen the characters and their plights. This early into Messina's film, with no sense of either the characters or the story, a shot like this is simultaneously meaningless and borderline pretentious. The still raven-haired and alabaster-skinned Binoche plays the ominously named Anna (as in the grandmother of Jesus), a Frenchwoman whose Italian husband left her an enormous villa in the shadow of the Etna volcano, in eastern Sicily, where she still lives. Her twentyish son, Giuseppe (Italian for Joseph), is presumably the one being buried during the film's opening scene, after which Anna retires, clad in black, to her hollow and empty-feeling home, with all mirrors covered in black crepe. A landline call announces the arrival of someone Anna doesn't know: Jeanne (Lou de Laage). The vivacious young woman turns out to be Giuseppe's French girlfriend and she's packed her bags to come and spend Easter at the family home, though now he's not answering his cell phone anymore. Anna lets her come over, though she can't bring herself to tell this young woman - named, one assumes, after Joan of Arc - that Giuseppe has died. Initially, though somewhat unusual, the sentiment feels understandable, because if Anna can keep Giuseppe alive for just one person, then he's not completely gone yet and she doesn't have to deal with her grief. The screenplay, written by a staggering four screenwriters including the director, deviates significantly from Pirandello's play, which focused on a how a mother's memories of her absent son were much better than the real thing. Amongst the major changes are not only Jeanne's character but also the role of modern technology. Giuseppe's cell phone, which he's left in his room, almost becomes a third character, serving not only as confessional for Jeanne, who keeps calling him and wondering when he'll finally return home, but also providing Anna with a way to get to know more about the young lovers by listening to Jeanne's voicemail messages (many of them heard in voice-over). Anna's unwholesome decision to keep mum becomes more objectionable with each moment that Jeanne passes in her home as they "wait" for his return "in time for Easter" and is also questioned by Pietro (Giorgio Colangeli), the home's lonely servant, who acts as Anna's conscience. But clearly, this is the kind of Catholic melodrama in which the conceit of having a mother mourn her son alone, and Jeanne, standing in for the faithful, eagerly awaits her beloved's return on Easter Sunday, is too beautiful to resist. There are also subtler religious parallels woven in throughout, including the suggestion that the film's actually set in 2004, which makes more sense if one realizes that in that year on Good Friday, the clearly ailing Pope Jean-Paul II, briefly glanced on TV, celebrated his last and very painful Via Crucis (he who would die almost exactly a year later). Audience's tolerance for this kind of heavy-handed, occasionally very mannerist symbolism may vary, though Messina does ensure that the religious parallels never completely eclipse the contemporary characters. They are given some space to be themselves, notably in a jocular interlude involving two strapping young men (Antonio Folletto and Domenico Diele) that Jeanne befriends and whom she takes home for a dinner that Anna has prepared. The entire sequence beautifully suggests how, in times of uncertainty or pain, there are established rituals people fall back on that are comforting because each person knows which role to play (a kiss at the door is especially telling in this regard). Binoche has rarely looked more Italian than here, and her command of the language has also audibly improved when compared to her awkwardly syncopated Italian in Kiarostami's Certified Copy. She has such quiet grace that even somewhat awkwardly metaphorical sequences - like when Anna's drinking days-old coffee from a stray cup in Giuseppe's room or when she realizes that the air escaping from a pink inflatable mattress is actually her son's breath - are transfigured into quietly wordless moments of considerable power. De Laage, so good in Breathe, also impresses here, which is no small feat since her character is an odd mix of contrasting desires, clearly wanting to reunite with her boyfriend enough to make it to Italy but also insouciant enough about his absence to never ask too many questions. Marco Bellocchio's ace regular production designer, Marco Dentici, was responsible for the sets and locations and they play an important role. The austerely decorated mansion amplifies Anna's sense of inner emptiness while making Jeanne feel somewhat lost, while the surrounding volcanic landscapes, consisting of black rocks and smoking crevices, suggest nothing less than the gates of hell. Despite the opening and some other look-at-me shots - someone swimming up for air as seen from the bottom of a lake; the sight of a pink inflatable mattress that the wind moves across a deserted inner courtyard, which will have to be ascribed to the director and cinematographer Francesco Di Giacomo's inexperience, the film's generally gorgeously shot, with Di Giacomo frequently capturing the small cast in their surroundings in ways that help suggest their psychology. Indeed, if Messina can find the right balance between his ambitions and his still-growing abilities as a filmmaker, he'll have a promising career ahead of him."
Non Essere Cattivo. Drama / Crime. Italy 2015, 100 min. Directed by Claudio Caligari. Starring: Luca Marinelli, Alessandro Borghi, Roberta Mattei, Silvia D'Amico, Alessandro Bernardini. Awards and festivals: Venice Film Festival - Best Film, Best Italian Film, Best Actor, Best Song, FEDIC Award; Gillo Pontecorvo-Arcobaleno Latino Award, Schermi di Qualità Award. A story set in the 90s and in the outskirts of Rome to Ostia, the same places of the films of Pasolini. His characters, in the '90s, seem to belong to a world that revolves around hedonism. A world where money, luxury cars, night clubs, cocaine and synthetic drugs are easy to run. A world in which Vittorio and Cesare, in their early twenty, act in search of their success. Initiation for their existence has a very high cost and Vittorio, to save himself, abandons Cesare, who instead will inexorably sink. The bond that unites them is so strong that Vittorio really never shall abandon his friend, always hoping to be able to look to the future with new eyes. Together.
Pecore in Erba. Comedy. Italy 2015, 86 min. Directed by Alberto Caviglia. Starring: Davide Giordano, Anna Ferruzzo, Bianca Nappi, Omero Antonutti, Vinicio Marchioni. Awards and festivals: Venice Film Festival - Best Italian Film, Premio Cinematografico ‘Civitas Vitae prossima' Award. Trastevere, the historic district of the Italian capital is put into turmoil by a sensational news story: Leonardo Zulliani has disappeared. The case becomes a true national emergency, but who's Leonardo? And what really happened?
 Sangue del Mio Sangue. Drama / History. Italy, Switzerland, France 2015, 112 min. Directed by Marco Bellocchio. Starring: Roberto Herlitzka, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio, Alba Rohrwacher, Lidiya Liberman, Fausto Russo Alesi. Awards and festivals: Venice Film Festival - FIPRESCI Prize. A mother pushes her son, Federico, a young man of arms, to visit the convent-prison in Bobbio, where Sister Benedetta is facing charges of witchery for seducing Fabrizio, Federico's twin brother, and making him betray his priestly mission. The mother pressures Fedrico to rehabilitate his brother legacy but he, too, falls under Benedetta's spell, thus sentencing her to a life sentence walled up in prison. Thirty years later, Federico, now Cardinal, will meet again Benedetta, still living behind those walls... Nowadays. Federico Mai, supposedly a Minister inspector, knocks at the doors of that very same convent, later transformed into prison and apparently abandoned, accompanied by a Russian millionaire, Rikalkov, interested in buying the property. In reality though, the place is still inhabited by a mysterious "Count" that illegally occupies some of the old prison cells and who wanders the city streets, alone, at night... The two foreigners alarm the whole Bobbio community which, guided by the Count, still lives by subterfuges and frauds, stonewalling the inescapable modernity with any means necessary. But is the new really better than the old?
Harry's Bar. Documentary. Italy 2015, 52 min. Directed by Carlotta Cerquetti. Awards and festivals: Venice Film Festival - Open Prize. What is so special, about Harry's Bar, the famous Venice restaurant? This documentary tells the story of how this place became a legend. Harry's Bar opened in 1931 and attracted a multitude of customers from the start, drawn to the atmosphere and the talents of barman Giuseppe, with his cocktails, gourmet dishes and exquisite hospitality. Over eight decades the bar has seen it all, from being closed during the fascist regime to being declared a national treasure in 2001, and witnessed a stream of writers, painters, directors, film stars, kings, queens and epicures, becoming a legend. "To me Harry's Bar in Venice has always been an iconic venue. Over the years, it turned into a sort of institution, a must-see for visitors to the city. So just what's so special about this place? I set off with these thoughts in mind. Together with Irene Bignardi and producer Giovanni Cassinelli, the story took shape. And so the story of the legendary ‘room' in Calle Vallaresso unfolded before our eyes, interwoven with the history of Venice itself, with Harry's Bar a most unique vantage point for evoking the story," - Carlotta Cerquetti. Carlotta Cerquetti studied photography at the IED in Rome and learned the ropes from fashion photographer Hiro in New York. She has contributed stories and photos to Epoca and other Italian and foreign magazines, from L'Espresso to Elle. Her first short film, Interno 12, won the prize for best debut film at the Valdarno Festival, the Akman Award at the Antalya Festival in Turkey, and a special mention at Capalbio Cinema. From 2011 to 2014, Cerquetti was second unit director on Cristina Comencini's films When the Night and Latin Lover. In 2007 her documentary Il nostro Rwanda premiered at the Rome Film Festival, while another documentary, Ageroland, won a special mention at the Ischia Film Festival, the Avanti! Award at the Naples Film Festival and the Roberto Rossellini Prize. In 2014 she made a video with artist Giosetta Fioroni, The Golden Bough, for Valentino.
Schedule:
1 March, Tuesday
20:00 - Per amor vostro. Q&A: Giuseppe Gaudino, Massimiliano Gallo, Isabella Sandri.
2 March, Wednesday
20:00 - L'Attesa
3 March, Thursday
19:00 - Non essere cattivo. Q&A: Roberta Mattei
21:30 - Harry's Bar. Q&A: Giovanni Cassinelli, Carlotta Cerquetti
4 March, Friday
19:00 - Pecore in erba. Q&A: Alberto Caviglia
21:20 - Bagnoli Jungle
5 March, Saturday
17:00 - Banat (Il Viaggio)
19:00 - A Bigger Splash
6 March, Sunday
19:00 - Sangue del mio sangue
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