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Silvia Luzi and Luca Bellino’s 2021 film Luce tells the introspective story of a young woman navigating her emotions and sense of identity. The film centers around Marianna Fontana’s riveting portrayal of an unnamed protagonist who works in a bleak southern Italian leather factory. Struggling with feelings of isolation, she finds an unexpected connection through mysterious phone calls from an unidentified man.

Luzi and Bellino craft a purposefully cryptic narrative to place viewers directly inside the protagonist’s mind. We learn little of the concrete details of her life, instead experiencing her world through her eyes. Constant close-ups and shallow focus emphasize each flicker of emotion across Fontana’s exquisite face. Her environment exists only as a blurred backdrop, prioritizing internal reflections over external actions.

This restrictive visual style aims to immerse audiences in the character’s intense psychological journey. Viewers must concentrate on subtle cues to glean insights into her desires,...

Silvia Luzi and Luca Bellino’s 2021 film Luce tells the introspective story of a young woman navigating her emotions and sense of identity. The film centers around Marianna Fontana’s riveting portrayal of an unnamed protagonist who works in a bleak southern Italian leather factory. Struggling with feelings of isolation, she finds an unexpected connection through mysterious phone calls from an unidentified man.

Luzi and Bellino craft a purposefully cryptic narrative to place viewers directly inside the protagonist’s mind. We learn little of the concrete details of her life, instead experiencing her world through her eyes. Constant close-ups and shallow focus emphasize each flicker of emotion across Fontana’s exquisite face. Her environment exists only as a blurred backdrop, prioritizing internal reflections over external actions.

This restrictive visual style aims to immerse audiences in the character’s intense psychological journey. Viewers must concentrate on subtle cues to glean insights into her desires,...

Locarno film festival

A young woman’s breakdown – or is it an epiphany? – in coastal Italy, in Luca Bellino and Silvia Luzi’s film, does not surrender its meaning easily

Luca Bellino and Silvia Luzi’s new film is an intriguing yet perplexing piece of work; it’s opaque and indirect, the storytelling appears incomplete and recedes implacably before the audience’s pursuit. It’s a kind of cinema that does not render up its meaning right away – or indeed at all. The keynote of extreme closeup on the lead character’s face is in implied contrast to the hazy distance where the film’s significance is perhaps sited.

A young woman played by Marianna Fontana lives in a tough Italian town on the coast, miserably working in a leather garment factory; she is one of a whole group of women whose job is to stake and stretch out pieces...

Italy’s Fandango Sales has taken global distribution rights outside Italy to Locarno competition entry “Luce” directed by Silvia Luzi and Luca Bellino.

The pair is best known for their 2017 movie “Crater” (“Il Cratere”) which played the Venice’s Critics Week in 2017 and won the special jury award at Tokyo.

“Luce” – which is produced by Oscar-nominated producer Donatella Palermo (“Fire at Sea”) – stars Marianna Fontana as a woman in her early twenties who has an alienating job in a leather factory in a cold and rainy town in Southern Italy “and feels the need to fill an absence in her life,” as the provided synopsis puts it.

“One day on the beach, she has a sudden inspiration,” it adds, and from that moment onwards her life also becomes someone else’s. “A voice on her cellphone becomes a tenuous line between her desires, her imagination, and the world around her,...

London, June 11 (Ians) Three men with heart failure, caused by the build-up of sticky, toxic proteins, are now free of symptoms after their condition “spontaneously reversed in an unprecedented case”, according to researchers from the UK.

Researchers from the University College London and the Royal Free Hospital said that the three men, aged 68, 76, and 82, were diagnosed with transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis — a form of amyloidosis affecting the heart.

It is a progressive condition and has until now been seen as irreversible, with half of patients dying within four years of diagnosis.

However, in a study, published as a letter in The New England Journal of Medicine, they reported that the men’s symptoms improved.

The three men’s recoveries were confirmed via blood tests, several imaging techniques including echocardiography (a type of ultrasound), and cardiovascular magnetic resonance (Cmr) scans showing that the build-up of amyloid proteins in the heart had cleared.

Starz Picks Up ‘Death & Nightingales’

Starz has acquired BBC period drama Death And Nightingales, which features The Americans actor Matthew Rhys and Fifty Shades of Grey’s Jamie Dornan. The three-part drama, which is based on Eugene McCable’s modern Irish classic, is written by The Fall creator Allan Cubitt and is produced by Imaginarium Productions and Soho Moon. Premiering on May 16 in the U.S., the series is a story of love, betrayal, deception, and revenge, set in the haunting countryside of Fermanagh in 1885. Red Arrow Studios International is overseeing global sales. Other buyers include HBO Europe, Sky Network Television (New Zealand), Yes (Israel), and DirecTV (Latin American markets excluding Brazil). Death And Nightingales first premiered on BBC Two in 2018.

Sky Italia Chiefs Exit

Sky Italia’s managing director Maximo Ibarra and programming chief Nicola Maccanico are leaving the Comcast-owned broadcaster. Ibarra’s...

ITV Studios has announced new international sales on “Romulus,” the TV series shot in Archaic Latin that takes its cue from the mythical tale of twins Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome. The drama is world premiering Friday at the Rome Film Festival.

The hotly anticipated skein, which is a Sky original in Italy, has been acquired for Germany by Deutsche Telekom for play on its MagentaTV streaming service, and by More TV Russia for Russia and all Cis territories. It has also been licensed by Greece’s Cosmote, which is the country’s top telco.

ITV Studios previously sold the innovative Rome origin show to HBO Europe for a slew of territories comprising all of the Nordics and Central Europe, as well as Spain, Portugal and Portuguese-speaking territories such as Angola, Cape Verde and Mozambique.

Talks are also underway with broadcasters in the U.S. and U.K. where Sky U.

The first two episodes of Sky’s Euro series Romulus, about the events that led to the foundation of Rome, will launch at the Rome Film Festival next month. Produced by Sky, Cattleya and Groenlandia, the show comes from director Matteo Rovere, marking his TV debut, and will star Andrea Arcangeli, Marianna Fontana and Francesco Di Napoli. The ten episodes were filmed in archaic Latin by Rovere alongside Michele Alhaique ed Enrico Maria Artale. Set eight centuries before Christ, the series charts an archaic and brutal world where the tribes of the Lega Latina have lived for years under the leadership of the king of Alba, but drought and famine are threatening peace and the life of the cities. ITV Studios is handling international sales. The show will debut in Italy on Sky.

A joint New York-based office for German Films and the Goethe-Institut will open from October 1 with €50,000 in support from the German government.

Sky Italia and Gomorrah producer Cattleya have unveiled the first look at their forthcoming big-budget drama Romulus, the founder and first king of Rome, which is being produced in archaic Latin.

The ITV-owned producer is producing the ten-part series, which was created by Matteo Rovere, who directed The First King feature. It marks Rovere’s television debut. The ten-part series is co-produced by Rovere’s Groenlandia and filming started in Rome last month.

It stars Andrea Arcangeli (Trust), Marianna Fontana (Indivisible) and Francesco Di Napoli (Piranhas) with Rovere directing alongside Michele Alhaique and Enrico Maria Artale. It is written by Rovere, Filippo Gravino (The First King) and Guido Iuculano (A Quiet Life).

The series is set in eighth century B.C., in a primitive and brutal world in which man’s fate is decided by the merciless power of nature and the gods. It is the story of Romulus and his twin brother Remus,...

Sky is building its slate of originals in Italy with “Romulus,” a 10-part series about the origin of Rome from Cattleya, the Italian producer that makes “Gomorrah.” Non-English-language drama is in vogue, but “Romulus” takes that a step further by having the characters speak in archaic Latin.

Matteo Rovere, known for his movie work, is attached to direct his first TV series. His shingle, Groenlandia, will co-produce. “‘Romulus’ is a story about feelings, war, brotherhood, courage and fear,” he said. “It is a great, epic fresco, a highly realistic reconstruction of the events that led to the foundation of Rome. But above all it is an investigation into the origins and the profound meaning of power in the West: a journey into an archaic and frightening world, where everything is sacred and people feel the mysterious and hostile presence of the gods everywhere.”

Rovere is familiar with the subject matter,...

Gomorrah producer Cattleya is making a TV drama about Romulus, the founder and first king of Rome, in archaic Latin for Sky Italia.

The ITV-owned producer is producing Romulus, created by Matteo Rovere, who directed The First King feature. It marks Rovere’s television debut. The ten-part series is co-produced by Rovere’s Groenlandia and will start filming in Rome in early June.

It will star Andrea Arcangeli (Trust), Marianna Fontana (Indivisible) and Francesco Di Napoli (Piranhas) with Rovere directing alongside Michele Alhaique and Enrico Maria Artale. It is written by Rovere, Filippo Gravino (The First King) and Guido Iuculano (A Quiet Life).

The series is set in eighth century B.C., in a primitive and brutal world in which man’s fate is decided by the merciless power of nature and the gods. It is the story of Romulus and his twin brother Remus, as seen through the...

A sensual, sexual and intellectual awakening proves mostly asleepening in “Capri-Revolution,” a nobly intended period saga from high-minded Italian filmmaker and playwright Mario Martone that rather buckles under the weight of its exhaustively footnoted ideas. Set in the anxious months preceding World War I, and mapping out a battle of wits and wills between two contrastingly educated men for the soul of a humble lady goatherd on the sun-blasted slopes of Capri, Martone’s film plants a flag for liberal philosophical progress and cultural blending in the face of insular, buttoned-up conservatism. Which is all well and good, but can’t patch over the tired misogynistic undertones of a premise that effectively hinges on gaseous male egos oppressively mansplaining a young woman into liberation. Though it implores audiences to look outward, this attractively appointed Franco-Italian production is unlikely to travel far beyond its own shores.

Bowing in competition at Venice...

Title: Capri-Revolution Director: Mario Martone Cast: Marianna Fontana, Reinout Scholten van Aschat, Antonio Folletto, Gianluca Di Gennaro, Eduardo Scarpetta, Jenna Thiam, Ludovico Girardello, Lola Klamroth, Maximilian Dirr, Donatella Finocchiaro. The poetic film director, Mario Martone, provides an insight in the boot-shaped land at the beginning of the 20th century, within the bewitching island of Capri. […]

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Indivisible (Indivisibili) Medusa Film Director: Edoardo De Angelis Written by: Nicola Guaglianone, Barbara Petronio, Edoardo De Angelis Cast: Angela Fontana, Marianna Fontana, Antonia Truppo, Massimiliano Rossi, Tony Laudadio Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 9/28/17 Opens: September 29, 2017 “Indivisible,” or “Indivisibili” in the original, might remind cinephiles of Josh Aronson’s film “Sound and Fury,” which […]

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For some films, it just takes a while to find a home.

That’s the case with the new film from director Edorardo de Angelis, a delightful little film entitled Indivisible.

Originally debuting at the Venice International Film Festival not this year but in 2016, de Angelis’ film introduces us to Dasy and Viola, two gorgeous young women who happen to not only be talented crooners, but also conjoined twins. A hit at various small scale local gatherings, the dynamic duo are ostensibly the primary source of income for their family, including their dickhead of a father who sees them as much as his daughters as he does a collective gimmick to be peddled to families for baptisms or young men to win the heart of a lover.

The pair, however, finds hope (at first) in the promises of not only freedom from their father’s shackles but from the physical...

Title: Indivisibili Director: Edoardo De Angelis Cast: Angela Fontana, Marianna Fontana, Antonia Troppo, Massimiliano Rossi, Tony Laudadio, Marco Mario De Notaris, Gaetano Bruno, Gianfranco Gallo, Peppe Servillo. Italian filmmaker Edoardo De Angelis presents a disquieting modern tale about ancestral exploitation of a physical distortion. Daisy and Viola are siamese twin sisters living in the suburbs […]

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When “Indivisible” screened for a crowd at Lincoln Center as the opening night selection of its annual “Open Roads: New Italian Cinema” series, it had no U.S. distribution plan. In late 2016, it had screened in higher-profile slots in Venice and Toronto, where buyers paid no heed. But at Lincoln Center, the movie — a seriocomic story about 18-year-old conjoined twins pursuing a music career (real-life twins Angela and Marianna Fontana) — played through the roof.

That was when Ira Deutchman saw its potential.

“I just fell in love with it,” the veteran distribution executive said. “It’s got everything in it. The movie is not a depressing, severe art film that requires people to look at it like work. Maybe distributors didn’t see the commerciality in a story about conjoined twins, but the women are beautiful and the movie is surprisingly entertaining.”

Read More:Ira Deutchman Receives First Annual Spotlight Lifetime Achievement Award

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