Highlights from 2016 Lavazza Italian Film Festival
SEE nothing but the very best in Italian filmmaking when the Lavazza Italian Film Festival makes its return this September! Hieu Chau has more.
Italy has long been a powerhouse in European filmmaking and is home to some truly excellent world cinema.
From Federico Fellini‘s all-time classic 8½ to modern wonders like Paolo Sorrentino‘s The Great Beauty, Italian cinema has proven time and time again why its cinema is worth championing. Palace certainly agrees and as such have, yet again, brought back the Lavazza Italian Film Festival to Australia.
Screening at select Palace Cinemas from September 15 to October 9, the Lavazza Italian Film Festival (LIFF) will be screening a mix of modern and classic Italian films across four distinct categories: Featured Films,It’s Complicated, Donne Italiane and Lights, Drama, Action!
Featured Films
Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday. | Image supplied.
Special event features like Opening Night film, Perfect Strangers, or Centrepiece film, Sweet Dreams, will deserve some extra attention as “can’t miss” events.
Closing night film, Roman Holiday, will no doubt please fans of the incomparable Audrey Hepburn and old Hollywood stalwart Gregory Peck as LIFF brings a new digital restoration of the American classic (itself a love letter to the city of Rome) for audiences to fall in love with once again.
Be sure to see Roman Holiday on the best screen in Melbourne – The Astor Theatre!
It’s Complicated
Teen coming-of-age drama One Kiss is just one of many films in LIFF 2016’s “It’s Complicated” stream. | Image supplied.
Home to Italian films about relationships, this section of LIFF’S program explores love, friendship and familial ties.
See films like One Kiss, a coming-of-age Italian drama about a gay teenager and star basketball player who overcomes bullying with the help of his two best friends, or The Worldy Girl, a film about young love at the crossroads all in this portion of the festival!
Donne Italiane
LIFF 2016’s strong focus on leading women actors includes period drama Antonia. | Image supplied.
Acknowledging the lack of female representation on screen, LIFF’s Donne Italiane section spotlights some of the best films starring Italy’s leading ladies.
Films in this section include Antonia, a period film set in 1930s Facist Italy starring Linda Caridi about a poet grappling with the bourgeois world she inhabited and her desire to escape reality, and Limbo, a psychological drama which focuses on a soldier’s reluctant return home after surviving a near fatal attack.
Limbo stars Kasia Smutniak, who is herself the daughter and granddaughter of soldiers — inspired casting to say the least!
Lights, Drama, Action!
Set in Australia, 88 Days is a documentary delves into the lives of Italian migrants striving to gain another year to their working visa. | Image supplied.
In this final segment, audiences can expect find a range of different films from crime dramas, comedies, biopics and so much more!
Support local filmmakers by seeing 88 Days, a documentary about young Italian migrant workers working in farms across rural Australia all in attempt to obtain an extra year towards their working holiday visa.
Get insight into inner-workings of the Italian mafia by seeing If You Tell Me which is based off the real-life story of Lea Garofalo who grew up with the Ndràngheta (Calabrian mafia) and wanted desperately to move away from the life of violence and crime.
Or get a look at one of Italy’s best films last year, Don’t Be Bad, which was the country’s official submission for the 2015 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the final film from director Claudio Caligari who passed away shortly after the film’s completion.
The full program for the Lavazza Italian Film Festival is now available for viewing. To see what else is on, head over to the official website and learn more about ticketing, events and more.