ITALIAN FILMS AT THE 2020 VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

SEPTEMBER 24 – OCTOBER 7
Online
  
The 2020 edition of the Vancouver International Film Festival will take place via VIFF Connect, which is the Festival’s new online streaming platform. Among the 100+ titles featured in this year’s Festival, a handful are important Italian productions or co-productions, presented in collaboration with the Consulate General of Italy and with the assistance of Il Centro - Italian Cultural Centre. The Italian section of VIFF 2020 includes:
 
HAMMAMET: Gianni Amelio’s semi-biographical drama about Bettino Craxi, leader of the Italian Socialist Party (1976-1993) and Prime Minister of Italy from 1983 till 1987. The film traces Craxi’s final months with his family at his oasis villa in Hammamet, Tunisia, where he fled to avoid prison for crimes of bribery and corruption. Under a heavy layer of prosthetics, veteran actor Pierfrancesco Favino (star of Bellocchio’s The Traitor) masterfully embodies Craxi’s larger-than-life persona, employing a repertoire of nuanced gestures while commanding the screen with appropriate hauteur.
Italy, 2019, Italian with English subtitles
 
SARITA: Sergio Basso’s touching “educational musical” revolving around 13-year-old Sarita, a Lhotshampa girl persecuted by Bhutanese police and living in a refugee camp in Nepal (Italy/Germany, 2019, Nepali with English subtitles). As a  special introduction to the film, an interview in English with director Sergio Basso (currently in Vancouver), presented by Il Centro - Italian Cultural Centre, will be available for viewing through Il Centro’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ilcentrovan) as of VIFF’s opening day.

BAD TALES (Favolacce): the D’Innocenzo brothers’ contemporary fable about the lives of four deferential schoolchildren in a suburban Roman community.
Italy/Switzerland, 2020, Italian with English subtitles
 
HERE WE ARE: Nir Bergman’s soulful drama about a stubborn, proud, aging divorcé and his autistic son.
Israel/Italy, 2020, Hebrew with English subtitles
 
SIBERIA: Abel Ferrara’s 2020 work showing him at his most undiluted, drowning viewers in potent imagery and crude poetry drawn from the tormented psyche of one of modern cinema’s greatest madmen, starring Willem Dafoe.
Italy/Germany/Mexico, 200, English
 
(Text: viff.org, adapted)
 
For info and tickets, please visit https://www.viff.org/Online/default.asp