Festival 2023

The theme of the 2023 feStivale was Forward. This was our first feStivale without our Founder Victor Laruccia’s guidance, and we chose to preserve his legacy and vision with the movies and events that we have put together to move Forward, following our values and mission to build a piazza together with our community.

Enjoy a few photos of our 2023 feSta and trailers of screened movies.

Il sorpasso

The ultimate Italian road comedy, Il sorpasso stars the unlikely pair of Vittorio Gassman and Jean-Louis Trintignant as, respectively, a waggish, freewheeling bachelor and the straitlaced law student he takes on a madcap trip from Rome to Tuscany. With an unpredictable journey that veers from slapstick to tragedy, this film, directed by Dino Risi, is a wildly entertaining commentary on the pleasures and consequences of the “good life”. A holy grail of commedia all’italiana, Il sorpasso is so fresh and exciting that one can easily see why it has long been adored in Italy.
‍‍In Italian with English subtitles.
Year: 1962
Director: Dino Risi
Screenplay: Dino Risi, Ettore Scola, Ruggero Maccari
Editing:Maurizio Lucidi
Cinematography: Alfio Contini
Music: Riz Ortolani
Cast: Vittorio Gassman, Catherine Spaak, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Luciana Angiolillo, Claudio Gora, Luigi Zerbinati, Franca Polesello
Production: INCEI Film, Sancro Film, Fair Film
World Sale: Janus

Bangla

Phaim, a young Muslim of Bangladeshi origin born in Italy 22 years ago, lives with his family in Rome’s multiethnic Torpignattara neighborhood. He works as a museum steward, and plays in a band. At a concert, he meets Asia, his exact opposite: pure instinct, and no rules. The attraction between them is immediate, and Phaim will have to figure out how to reconcile his love for the young woman with the most inviolable of Islam’s rules: no sex before marriage.
‍‍In Italian with English subtitles.
Year: 2019
Director: Phaim Bhuiyan
Screenplay: Phaim Bhuiyan, Vanessa Picciarelli
Editing: Roberto Di Tanna
Cinematography: Simone D’Onofrio
Music: Dario Lanzellotti
Cast: Phaim Bhuiyan, Carlotta Antonelli, Sahila Mohiuddin, Nasima Akhter, Rishad Noorani, Fabian Durrani, Sanija Shoshi Haque, Raja Sethi, Simone Liberati, Pietro Sermonti, Davide Ornaro, Alessia Giuliani, Milena Mancini
Production: Fandango, TimVision
World Sales: Fandango

Siccità | Dry

An imagined three-year drought serves as the point of departure for the latest by Paolo Virzì, a satirical ensemble drama that features a top-notch cast and a clever way with social critique. Set in Rome, Dry follows a constellation of self-absorbed characters as the drought and subsequent water shortage take their toll on the city’s population, exacerbating socioeconomic tensions and perhaps suggesting the imminent end of days. Virzì slyly observes these sometimes likable, sometimes repellent people as their paths cross amid the semi-apocalyptic circumstances, ultimately arriving at a wryly ironic film about the post-Covid world and the vanity of humans in the face of global catastrophe.
Year: 2022
Director: Carolina Cavalli
Screenplay: Carolina Cavalli
Editing: Babak Jalali
Cinematography: Lorenzo Levrini
Music: Niccolò Contessa
Cast: Benedetta Porcaroli, Galatéa Bellugi, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Michele Bravi
Production: Elsinore Film, Wildside, I Wonder Pictures, Charades, Tenderstories
World Sales: Oscilloscope

The Girl From Tomorrow

The Girl from Tomorrow tells the story of Lia, a young woman who reacts to the most terrible form of violence with an act of rebellion which blows apart the social conventions of the time. In a world where the strongest dictate the rules, where mafia roots run deep and are accepted as a natural part of life, and where the powerful make decisions while the weak do as they’re told, her courage will pave the way for the fight for women’s rights. The movie is inspired by the true story of Franca Viola, a seventeen-year-old girl from Alcamo, Sicily, who, in 1965, was the first woman in Italy to say no to a “shotgun” wedding, refusing her abductor and rapist Filippo Melodia, who was the nephew of a local mafia boss.
Year: 2023
Director: Marta Savina
Screenplay: Marta Savina
Editing: Paola Freddi
Cinematography: Francesca Amitrano
Music: Yakamoto Kotzuga
Cast: Claudia Gusmano, Fabrizio Ferracane, Francesco Colella, Manuela Ventura, Dario Aita, Federica Victoria Caiozzo aka Thony, Maziar Firouzi, Francesco Giulio Cerilli, Paolo Pierobon
Production: Capri Entertainment, Medset Film, Tenderstories, Vision Distribution, Rai Cinema
World Sales: Vision Distribution

Nostalgia

Rione Sanità, Naples. Present day. 50-something businessman Felice Lasco (Pierfrancisco Favino) returns from the Middle East to visit his aging mother. Wandering the streets, Felice rediscovers the city, its codes and rituals, and memories that still haunt him. Despite local priest Don Luigi’s advice to leave his past behind, he looks for his boyhood friend Oreste, now a feared local criminal. Beautifully shot, Nostalgia gradually reveals itself as the parable of a man and a city teetering between redemption and damnation. Vibrantly capturing the pulsing heart of Naples, this movie is a deeply felt exploration of the complexity of homecoming.
Year: 2022
Director: Mario Martone
Screenplay: Ippolita Di Majo, Mario Martone, from the novel by Ermanno Rea
Editing: Jacopo Quadri
Cinematography: Paolo Carnera
Cast: Pierfrancesco Favino, Francesco Di Leva, Tommaso Ragno, Aurora Quattrocchi, Sofia Essaidi, Nello Mascia, Emanuele Palumbo, Artem, Salvatore Striano, Virginia Apicella
Production: Picomedia, Mad Entertainment, Medusa Film, Rosebud Entertainment Pictures
World Sales: Breaking Glass Pictures

Amanda

Born into an upper-class family with a doting mother who pays the bill for her indolent lifestyle, 24-year-old Amanda (Benedetta Porcaroli) spends time avoiding work and haunting the local cinematheque in Turin, where she looks for boyfriends but only finds “weird” misfits who mirror her own social situation of being alone every Saturday night. She is stubborn, abrupt to the point of rudeness but also witty and fascinating, qualities that only her family and their housekeeper get to see. When Amanda discovers that Rebecca, to whom she was close as a toddler, is back in town, she embarks on a mission to convince her that they are still best friends. New from Venice and Toronto premieres, debut director Carolina Cavalli delivers a comical, stylized character portrait with a strong central turn from Benedetta Porcaroli.
Year: 2022
Director: Carolina Cavalli
Screenplay: Carolina Cavalli
Editing: Babak Jalali
Cinematography: Lorenzo Levrini
Music: Niccolò Contessa
Cast: Benedetta Porcaroli, Galatéa Bellugi, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Michele Bravi
Production: Elsinore Film, Wildside, I Wonder Pictures, Charades, Tenderstories
World Sales: Oscilloscope

Il colibrì | The Humingbird

Based on the novel by Sandro Veronesi, this is the tale of the life of Marco Carrera (Pierfrancesco Favino), known as Colibrì, “the hummingbird”: a life of fateful coincidences, loss and stories of undying love. The plot moves forward on the strength of recollections that allow us to leap from one period to another, in a fluid time ranging from the early 1970s to a near future. It is at sea that Marco meets Luisa Lattes, a beautiful, unusual young woman – a lifelong love never to be extinguished. Il Colibrì is the story of the ancestral force of life, of the arduous struggle we all make to withstand what at times appears intolerable – also by wielding the powerful weapons of illusion, happiness and good cheer.
Year: 2022
Director: Francesca Archibugi
Screenplay: Francesca Archibugi, Laura Paolucci, Francesco Piccolo, from the novel by Sandro Veronesi
Editing: Esmeralda Calabria
Cinematography: Luca Bigazzi
Music: Battista Lena
Cast: Pierfrancesco Favino, Kasia Smutniak, Bérénice Bejo, Nanni Moretti, Laura Morante, Sergio Albelli, Massimo Ceccherini, Alessandro Tedeschi, Benedetta Porcaroli
Production: Fandango, Les Films des Tournelles, Orange Studio, Rai Cinema
World Sales: Fandango

Beata te | Blessed

Marta is a theater director, single and more or less satisfied with her life, one step away from the debut of her Hamlet. On her 40th birthday she receives an unexpected visit: the Archangel Gabriel, who would like to announce the birth of a child. But Marta is not sure she wants a child “as a gift” and she asks for time to think about it. Taken aback by this request, forced to stay on Earth longer than expected, Gabriel moves into her house for two weeks while Marta figures out what she wants in order to be fulfilled and happy.
Year: 2022
Director: Paola Randi
Screenplay: Lisa Nur Sultan, Carlotta Corradi, from the play “Farsi fuori” by Luisa Merloni
Editing: Paolo Turla, Paola Randi
Cinematography: Valerio Azzali
Music: Giordano Corapi
Cast: Serena Rossi, Fabio Balsamo, Paola Tiziana Cruciani, Gianni Ferreri, Valentina Correani, Elisa Di Eusanio, Corrado Fortuna, Emiliano Masala, Alessandro Riceci, Caterina Bernardi
Production: Cinemaundici, Vision Distribution, Sky
World Sales: Vision Distribution