February 28 – August 31, 2023
at Spazju Kreattiv (map)
We’re proud to announce a new collaboration with
Spazju Kreattiv and the M.A. in film studies of the Faculty of Arts (University of Malta)
resulting in the Italian Film Days:
6 Italian movies from 2022 playing for the first time in Malta!
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All screenings are in Italian with English subtitles
Ticket PRICES REDUCED for the members of the Institute!
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| THE MOVIES |
Siccità (Dry)
by Paolo Virzì
Tuesday February 28 at 19:30
Cert 15
A semi-apocalyptic drama set in Rome, where it hasn’t rained for three years. The drought has become a political issue, with commentators queueing up to offer theories and to point the finger of blame. The social divide is increasing, with wealthy citizens finding a way around the water shortage, while others go thirsty. Hospitals are overloaded with patients, many suffering from lethargy, and apparently related to an influx of cockroaches. There’s clearly an environmental issue here, but most people we encounter are too self-involved to think about that. The drought is the backdrop to their stories, and the impact of it puts their issues into sharp focus.
[source: https://deadline.com/]
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La Stranezza (Strangeness)
by Roberto Andò
Tuesday March 28 at 19:30
Cert 15
A tragicomic period piece about how Pirandello found inspiration to write his masterpiece Six Characters in Search of an Author in 1921, when he returned to Sicily for the 80th birthday of his mentor, famous novelist and playwright Giovanni Verga. Upon arriving in the city of Agrigento, the playwright becomes captured by a world populated by strange personalities, ghostly visions, distant memories and melancholy apparitions, all of which inspire him to write the play that marked a milestone in 20th-century world theater.
[source: https://variety.com/]
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Astolfo (Never too late for love)
by Gianni Di Gregorio
Tuesday April 11 at 19:30
Cert 15
Astolfo, a retired professor evicted from his apartment, decides to move into an old noble but decrepit palace, the last remnant of his family patrimony in a remote village of Abruzzo, where he hasn’t been for decades. Soon enough, as a newcomer, he befriends a vagabond, a retired chef and a young handyman. A group of four live harmoniously at his place when he comes across Stefania, a charming and generous woman of his age. Astolfo falls in love and struggles with feelings he thought belonged to the past. Encouraged by his loyal group, Astolfo makes a brave step and learns delightedly that it’s never too late to fall in love.
[source: https://www.imdb.com/]
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Guarda chi si vede (Look who’s there)
by Riccardo Camilli
– sponsored by the University of Malta –
Tuesday June 30 at 19:30
Claudia, a salesgirl in an underwear shop, lives in the suburbs of Rome. She shares everything with her 18-year-old daughter, Nina, including the sorrow she’s been carrying for three years: Marco, the family man, died together with 9 other people when a bridge in the Marche region collapsed while he was coming back from a vinyl market.
The days pass by, customers gossip about Claudia’s misfortune, journalists chase her only to exploit her tragedy, her sister Katia loses herself in toxic relationships, her mother Marisa can’t start a new life after her marriage falls apart, and Nina is unable to loosen up and enjoy her first sex and love experiences.
All the women around Claudia are unable to have a healthy relationship with men: each in their own way, but possibly all feeling sorry for Claudia, who’s trying her best to take her mind off her grief, working hard and hanging out with her gabby best friend, Martina.
One night, Claudia feels an urge to talk to her beloved husband. She makes herself pretty and even sets the table for dinner. And Marco, just like that, shows up in front of her…
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Chiara
by Susanna Nicchiarelli
Tuesday June 27 at 19:30
Cert 15
A historical musical drama directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli that premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Costume Design at the latest Premi David di Donatello!
A biopic of St. Clare of Assisi, who left her wealthy family to become a nun after hearing St. Francis preach and ended up standing up to the Pope himself.
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Le otto montagne (The eight mountains)
by Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch
– David di Donatello Award for Best Film 2023 –
Tuesday July 25 at 19:30
Cert 12
This rich, beautiful and inexpressibly sad film is about the friendship between men who can’t talk about their feelings and about winning and losing at the great game of life. It is set in the breathtaking and wonderfully photographed Italian Alpine valley of Aosta, which includes the slopes of Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn. But the “eight mountains” of the title refers to the eight highest peaks of Nepal: a mysterious symbol of worldly ambition and conquest.
Belgian film-makers Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch have adapted the award-winning 2016 novel by Italian author Paolo Cognetti and have created a deeply intelligent meditation on our capacity for love, and how it is shaped by the arbitrary, irreversible experiences of childhood, and by our relationship with the landscape. The Aosta valley is depicted with magnificent sweep, and van Groeningen and Vandermeersch find a stratum of sadness under it, a kind of water table of tears.
[source: https://www.theguardian.com/international]
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Il Signore delle Formiche (Lord of the Ants)
by Gianni Amelio
Thursday August 31 at 19:30
Cert 15
The movie takes as its subject the gay Italian author Aldo Braibanti, and the social and legal opposition he faced over his sexuality in mid-1960s Rome. Solemn, stately and perhaps a little stifled, it’s the kind of queer statement you might expect from a veteran filmmaker who wasn’t until relatively recently out and proud, and is rather poignant for that.
Lord of the Ants sympathizes with the principle of living out loud while conducting itself a little more demurely. Shying coyly away from the more sensual side of its subject’s life, it concentrates on the quietly righteous academic and political stand that Braibanti took for his sexuality. The bulk of the film takes the shape of an old-fashioned courtroom drama around the absurd, unjust trial he faced in the late 1960s, where he was accused of the medieval crime of plagiarism.
[source: https://variety.com/]
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