The Italian Film Festival opens on Thursday 1 October with a new live-action version of the classic Pinocchio fairy tale. The traditionally popular festival runs until Wednesday 14 October with screenings at Luna, Luna on SX, Windsor Cinema and Raine Square’s Palace Cinema.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary – and in honour of the late great Ennio Morricone, one of the world’s greatest film composers – the festival will close with Giuseppe Tornatore’s Malèna starring Monica Bellucci.
The program also has two family films. For kids fifteen years and older is My Brother Chases Dinosaurs. Inspired by a true story, this is a joyous and poignant film about the fear of being judged. And for the whole family, The Most Beautiful Day in the World – a modern-day fairy tale in which a down on his luck theatre manager receives a strange inheritance – custody of two children, and discovers that one of them has amazing telekinetic powers.
The Goddess of Fortune, directed by Ferzan Ozpetek is another film to look out for. It centres on a gay couple who have been together for 15 years. Alessandro (Edoardo Leo) and Arturo (Stefano Accorsi) are hosting a wedding for their friends when another friend Annamaria (Jasmine Trinca) arrives late with her two children.
The wedding is a celebration of diversity, but the following day Annamaria leaves her two children with Alessandro and Arturo while she goes into a Rome hospital for tests as to why she has been suffering from terrible headaches. There is nothing like a couple of kids to put pressure on an already unsteady relationship.
The rom-com morphs into an emotional drama with touches of horror that are hinted at in the opening scene of the film. When things get too difficult, Alessandro and Arturo take the children to Annamaria’s mother (Barbara Alberti), a baroness who lives in a Baroque mansion and uses the Grimm brothers fairy tales as directions on how to care for children.
The Italian Film Festival runs from Thurs 1st – Wed 14th October. Visit italianfilmfestival.com.au for more information.
Lezly Herbert
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