The 2022 Italian Film Festival Presents A Programme Of New, Old, Sexy And Bold

It’s back for another year of passionate Italian storytelling.

This year’s Cinema Italiano Festival/Italian Film Festival kicks off next week with opening night film, The Ties (Lacci) - a family drama that revolves around an infidelity and spans three decades. It opened the Venice International Film Festival in 2021 and it’s a New Zealand premiere.

Following that impressive opening, the programme’s dramatic offerings include: Hidden Away (Volevo Nascondermi), a fascinating biopic about tormented artist, Antonio Ligabue; Padrenostro, a riveting thriller about a young impressionable boy, his friendship with an older boy and the sinister secret that surrounds his father; You Came Back (Lasciami Andare), a suspense drama with a supernatural edge, set against the backdrop of Venice; and festival centrepiece, To Chiara (A Chiara), a thriller noir about a teenage girl who has to deal with a disturbing family truth and make some difficult choices.

Italian humour can be dry, quirky, slapstick and caustic - sometimes all in the same movie! For laughs, the festival offers Three Perfect Daughters (È per il tuo bene), a hilarious look at three fathers, whose daughters’ modern-day concepts of love are not their idea of perfection or Once Upon a Time in Bethlehem (Il Primo Natale), a biblical time-travelling comedy and very Italian. For those preferring a more satirical comedy, award-winner The Predators (I Predatori) focuses on two families, one bourgeois and intellectual and the other proletarian and fascist. Both living in the city of Rome,a trivial accident brings these families together and sets them on a collision course.

A highlight of the festival is the New Zealand premiere of renowned director, Nanni Moretti’s new film, Three Floors (Tre Piani). Set in an apartment block in the neighbourhood of Prati, the film weaves together three seemingly divergent worlds in a plot arc that is gripping and poignant.

The retrospective this year features three films from one of Italy’s most esteemed directors, Roberto Rossellini: Stromboli, Journey to Italy and Rome Open City (Roma Cittá Aperta). As a contorno to this, the Festival is also screening the Doc Edge audience favourite The Rossellinis - a glimpse into the family life and personal legacy of Roberto Rossellini.

In a homage to film goddess Gina Lollobrigida, the festival also presents the classic Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell, a plot you may recognise as the inspiration for the musical, Mamma Mia.

The festival opens 16 June 2022 at The Govett Brewster in New Plymouth before its run of six Auckland cinemas from 22 June. It then travels the length and breadth of the country – to Matakana, Whakatane, Tauranga, Taupo, Napier, Havelock North, Palmerston North, Masterton, Wellington, Blenheim, Nelson, Christchurch and Arrowtown, before returning to Waiheke Island in the north.

For more information, the full programme and to book tickets to the Cinema Italiano Festival | Italian Film Festival 2022, visit www.italianfilmfestivalnz.com

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