Movies
Country: Italy
Flee
FLEE tells the story of Amin Nawabi as he grapples with a painful secret he has kept hidden for 20 years, one that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and his soon to be husband. Recounted mostly through animation to director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, he tells
Benedetta
Inspired by a true story, “satiric provocateur” Paul Verhoeven‘s (BASIC INSTINCT, ELLE, SHOWGIRLS) BENEDETTA (loosely based on the 1986 non-fiction book ‘Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy‘ by Judith C. Brown. The film takes place in a nunnery during the late 17th century in Pescia,
VIFF 2021: Flee
Leaving a home behind collapses a set of connections to the world; for the refugee, who cannot return, it means to watch those connections disappear without the power to renew them or prevent their distortion by memory. Amin Nawabi, the pseudonymous subject of Flee, recounts his family’s forced departure from
The Truffle Hunters
Deep in the forests of Northern Italy resides the prized white Alba truffle. Desired by the wealthiest patrons in the world, it remains a pungent but rarified mystery. It cannot be cultivated or found, even by the most resourceful of modern excavators. The only souls on Earth
Under the Tuscan Sun
After a rough divoce, Frances, a 35 year old book editor from San Francisco takes a tour of Tuscany at the urgings of her friends. On a whim she buys Bramasole, a run down villa in the Tuscan countryside and begins to piece her life together starting with the villa
Malena
On the day in 1940 that Italy enters the war, two things happen to the 12-year-old Renato: he gets his first bike, and he gets his first look at Malèna. She is a beautiful, silent outsider who’s moved to this Sicilian town to be with her husband, Nico. He promptly
The Last Emperor
We are tipping our hat to an undisputed icon of Italian cinema, the controversial late auteur Bernardo Bertolucci, with a screening of his lush, challenging, multilayered epic period drama THE LAST EMPEROR – a film that won nine Academy Awards, unexpectedly sweeping every category in which it was nominated. The
Dogman
In a seaside village on the outskirts of an Italian city, where the only law seems to be survival of the fittest, Marcello is a slight, mild-mannered man who divides his days between working at his modest dog grooming salon, caring for his daughter Alida, and being coerced into the
La Strada
Iconic Italian auteur Federico Fellini drew on his own circus background for LA STRADA, which took home the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 1954. Set in a seedy traveling carnival, this symbolism-laden drama revolves around brutish strongman Zampano (the wonderful Anthony Quinn), his simple and servile girlfriend Gelsomin (Giulietta Masina),
Dario Argento’s Deep Red (4K Restoration!)
From Dario Argento, the man behind some the greatest excursions in Italian horror (SUSPIRIA, THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, THE CAT O’ NINE TAILS), comes DEEP RED: Arguably the ultimate “giallo.” Aided by a throbbing score from legendary proggers Goblin, this hallucinatory fever dream is punctuated by some of