Cinema Italy Returns With a Another Crop of Italian Films

With 20 years of programming under its belt, Cinema Italy returns to Miami at O Cinema for four days of cinema Italiano with ten film premieres. Even after two decades, artistic director Claudio Di Persia remains committed to the festival's objective to "bring together passionate people with the common goal of bringing [Italian] cinematographic culture to Miami and beyond."

If there is one thing uniting this diverse group of films, it is the pursuit of la bella vita (the beautiful life), one defined by friends, family, and one's desire to live life passionately and authentically.

Cinema Italy opens Friday, March 15, with the coming-of-age film My Soul Summer. The film is a touching tale of a 17-year-old girl finding her voice over one summer. While training for an audition for an esteemed conservatorium, under her mother's stern direction, Anita (played by newcomer Casadilego) strikes her own path, spending the summer with her bohemian grandmother and the unexpected tutelage of an over-the-hill former rock star. Aside from the pleasures of an Italian summer, My Soul Summer is a powerful lesson about following your passions.
The Saturday program contains four distinctive films about friendship and family. What a Life! (Lo vivo altrove!), loosely based on an unfinished novel by Gustave Flaubert, finds two men named Fausto (played by Giuseppe Battiston and Rolando Ravello) exhausted by the urban grind and fantasizing about pastoral freedom. They make a rash decision to relocate to live a simple country life and find it not so simple. As they learn to navigate their new life, they learn about community, perseverance, and that it is never too late to change your life. In contrast, 100 Sundays (Cento domeniche) moves from comedy to tragedy when Antonio (played by director Antonio Albanese) spends his life working hard for his family and taking simple pleasures in life. When his daughter is about to marry into a wealthy family, Antonio is determined to cover the ceremony with his hard-earned savings. The film transforms into a Kafkaesque nightmare with shades of neorealism when Antonio cannot get his money out of the bank.

The evening films begin with The Most Beautiful Century of My Life (Il più bel secolo della mia vita), an intergenerational road-trip dramedy rooted in an arcane Italian law that bars adopted children from learning the identities of their birth parents until their 100th birthday. Giovanni (Valerio Lundini), a 30-something adoptee, desperately wants to know his past, but to change the law, he needs the help of Gustavo (Sergio Castellitto), a 100-something adoptee, who doesn't want to look back. This odd couple finds commonalities when Giovanni drives Gustavo to discover his origins. The night ends with the nonlinear epic The Hummingbird (Il colibrì), a Toronto International Film Festival selection. It follows the life of a single man (Marco Carrera) and flutters between the past, present, and future. It is a plot that is nearly impossible to summarize in words but is felt as a profound portrait of a man and the women who shaped him.
The festival continues on Sunday, March 17, with four additional films. The comedy When (Quando) is about the passage of time when Neri (played by Neri Marcorè) awakes from a 31-year coma and must catch up on the three decades that passed him by with the help of his caretaking nun (Valeria Solarino). Scordato is a different take on the passage of time. The life of Orlando (played by director Rocco Papaleo) is interrupted when he meets Olga (Giorgia), a physiotherapist, who diagnoses him with emotional immaturity. To cure him, she needs to study his body language from a childhood photo, sending Orlando on an odyssey back to his birthplace to confront his past. Time stands still in Thank You, Guys (Grazie ragazzi) as an out-of-work actor (Antonio Albanese) accepts a job teaching acting to prison inmates. He regains his passion for theater when his pupils demonstrate unexpected talents and decides to stage Waiting for Godot against the wishes of a staunch warden. Time is racing in the night's final film, the taut thriller Like Sheep Among Wolves (Come pecore in mezzo ai lupi). Vera, played by Isabella Ragonese, must balance her dangerous work and protecting her family when the crime syndicate she supplies weapons to becomes involved with her younger brother.

The festival concludes with the heart-warming true story of Luca Trapanese and Alba, a single gay man and an infant with Down's syndrome. Born for You (Nata per te) begins with Luca (played by Pierluigi Gigante), a single gay man and natural caregiver who desperately wants a family, and Alba, a baby who has been rejected by 30 heterosexual couples for adoption. The film tells the tale of how these two souls found each other despite discrimination and legal obstacles to become a family.

A mission to increase the visibility and accessibility of Italian cinema motivates Cinema Italy and Di Persia, who says, "We have hundreds of stories to tell that go back millennia as well as those that look into the future with bright eyes." With this year's selection, Cinema Italy brings ten of those stories to Miami.

Cinema Italy. Friday, March 15, through Monday, March 18, at O Cinema South Beach, 1130 Washington Ave., Miami Beach; cinemaitaly.com. Tickets cost $13 to $70.