3rd Annual
Italian Contemporary Film Festival
June 12 – 20
In Toronto, Vaughan,
Hamilton, Montreal and Quebec City
In many ways ICFF is the little film festival that could. It
is in its third year, with an increasingly impressive in number and quality of
its cinematic offerings. 38 films will
be shown, 10 North American premieres films, 3 world premieres and 3 Canadian premieres.
The festival falls during Ontario Italian Heritage Month so it is fitting that
some of Italy’s latest, most loved or rarest will find new audiences, across
the province and in Montreal and Quebec. We checked out some of the ICFF films
in advance and found plenty to celebrate.
The Mafia Only Kills in Summer
The Mafia Only Kills
in Summer (La mafia uccide solo d'estate) was the runaway hit at the 33rd
Torino Film Festival last November written, directed by and starring Pif, one
of Italy’s most beloved comic actors and filmmakers. It premiered to a standing ovation and the
President of the Italian Senate called it “the best film on the mafia
ever”. While funny and entertaining, the
film also shows mobster life at its most vicious and its effect on the lives of
ordinary people. It is seen largely
through the eyes of a young boy who comes to know the reach of the mob in his hometown
town of Sicily. It’s funny and satirical
but has that unmistakable cast of deeply embedded crime.
Blame Freud
Paolo Genovese’ Blame
Freud (Tutta colpa di Freud) is a lighthearted comedy about love and how to
get it. A psychiatrist and his three
daughters are single and all looking for the right person. The father believes
that 5% of men are worthy and his daughters do their best to confirm or deny
through their own research. One falls in love with a physically music aficionado who resists her, another
tries to switch from dating women to men with mixed results and a third begins
dating a man the same age of her father. As for him, he is falling for the
woman with the dog who happens to be his daughter’s older partner’s wife. It’s a sex farce that celebrates love in all
its forms and family bonds, and looks wonderful in sunny, food mad Italy.
Like the Wind
For gripping fact based police drama, the unsettling Like the Wind (Come il vento) from Marco
S. Puccioni follows the dangerous career of Armida Miserere, a high-ranking
police official who moves up the ranks to become governor of Italy’s most
dangerous prisons. She’s tough as nails
and does things her way, putting herself in harm’s way to carry out the law. Life
becomes almost unbearable when her lover is murdered. Her determination to bring the killers to
justice isn’t merely brave but heroic. Leading lady Valeria Golino splits her
career between American and European films and is best known in Hollywood for
her work with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, Sean Penn, Gary Oldman, Charlie
Sheen and Quentin Tarantino. Golino’s
performance in Like the Wind is formidable.
First Snowfall
Andrea Segre’s First
Snowfall (La prima neve) is a tough story of an African man living in the
Italian mountains with his year old baby girl.
His neighbours and friends are happy he’s moved into their remote
village where he becomes a father figure to a young boy and a help to an
elderly farmer. But he suffers in
silence, mourning the death of his beloved wife in childbirth, and becomes
emotionally dead. The only time he feels alive is with the young boy, roaming
around the mountains and thinking about the future. His infant daughter’s eyes
remind him of his tragic loss and he decides something has to change. First
Snowfall is a sombre and slow moving film that hits strong emotional notes with
powerful, low key performances. Its
isolated mountain top locations are strikingly beautiful and the film never
strays outside its natural world.
Carlo Verdone in The Great Beauty
Special guests attending ICFF include actors Vittoria
Puccini, Enrico Brignano, Stephen Baldwin, Nick Mancuso; directors Carlo
Verdone, Paolo Genovese, Joe Medeiros, and Frank D’Angelo, and prolific young
producer Andrea Iervolino and his co-producer Monika Bacardi. Director, actor
and screenwriter, Carlo Verdone, will receive the ICFF Lifetime Achievement
Award in recognition of his contribution to Italian cinema. Verdone is best known to North American
audiences from his role in The Great Beauty which won an Academy Award®, a
Golden Globe® and BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Language Film for 2013. Verdone
will attend the North American premiere of Under a Lucky Star (Sotto una buona
stella) at TIFF Bell Lightbox on Thursday June 19 at 9p.m.
For more information, please check out ICFF films and
information at:
@ICFFToronto
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