Italians weave past and present at Venice film fest

(ANSA) - Rome, August 28 - The Italian cinema sphere will be represented at this year's Venice Film Festival by a 'triple M' of directors, among others: Mario Martone, Franco Maresco and Pietro Marcello. The festival will run from August 28 to September 7 with a jury under Argentinian Lucrecia Martel.
    Three Italians will be serving as a unifying thread between Italy's past and more recent history. There is a classic of Eduardo De Filippo's moral theatre adapted to the contemporary Naples of 'Gomorra' in a text by Mario Martone, who will be in the competition for the second year in a row.
    After 'Capri Revolution', he will be in the running for the Golden Lion 'Il Sindaco del Rione Sanita' ('The Mayor of Rione Sanita') with Francesco Di Leva in the role of the godfather Antonio Barracano, to whom everyone asks for justice and protection as a sort of Camorra boss halfway between morals and power almost despite himself. Then there is a grotesque interpretation of Sicily some 25 years after the killings of the judges Falcone and Borsellino in Franco Maresco's 'La Mafia Non E' Piu' Quella di una Volta'.
    In this film, a disenchanted director comes up against the civil rights passion of an 80-year-old photographer who has documented a long string of mafia crimes over the decades while street performer Ciccio Mira is working on a concert entitled "Neomelodici per Falcone e Borsellino". And then there is more Naples, where Pietro Marcello set an adaptation of Jack London's 'Martin Eden' (which was set in California in the book) to talk about the novel, culture which crushes misery, social classes that divide populations across the world, and love, which has extraordinary power. The story is a world that laughs at temporal rules, with a chameleonic Luca Martinelli, who starts out as an illiterate sailor but after falling in love with the upper-middle-class Elena becomes a successful novelist. The three Italian directors acting as a unifying thread for the story of Italy between good and evil alongside stories using a great deal of fantasy and literary references. Out of competition, on the other hand, are Gabriele Salvatores's 'Tutto il Mio Folle Amore', in which an adolescent leads the three most important adults in his life - played by Claudio Santamaria, Valeria Golino and Diego Abatantuono and from Fulvio Ervas's book 'Se Ti Abbraccio Non Avere Paura' and 'Vivere' by Francesca Archibugi, a story revolving around a family starring Micaela Ramazzotti and Adriano Giannini. In its world premiere are two episodes of eagerly awaited international television series by Sky Studios: 'The New Pope' by Paolo Sorrentino with Jude Law and John Malkovich and 'Zerozerozero' by Stefano Sollima, based on Roberto Saviano's bestseller on cocaine trafficking. There are many others, as well, such as a story on influencer Chiara Ferragni in 'Chiara Ferragni - Unposted' by Elisa Amoruso, as well as Alessandro' Rossetto's 'Effetto Domino' on the economic crisis in the Northeast and the "surprising and undefinable" 'Il Varco by Federico Ferrone and Michele Manzolini.
    There is also the closing film 'The Burnt Orange Heresy' by Giuseppe Capotondi in the fiction section and 'Il Pianeta di Mare' by Andrea Segre in the non-fiction section, which talks about Marghera and environmental impact. 'Citizen Rosi' by Didi Gnocchi and Carolina Rosi is a film on Italian history through the films of Francesco Rosi.
    In the Orizzonti section there is the autobiographical debut of Nunzia De Stefano (former wife of Matteo Garrone, met on the set of 'Gomorra', who grew up in a Ponticelli container for those displaced by the 1980 earthquake) called 'Nevia' and the debut by Carlo Sironi (son of Alberto, the Montalbano director who recently passed away) with 'Sole'. Biennale College is bringing in Chiara Campara's debut with 'Lessons of Love', while among the documentaries of Venezia Classici are Eugenio Cappuccio's 'Fellini Fine Man', Steve Della Casa's 'Boia, Maschere e Segreti: l'Horro Italiano degli Anni Settanta', and 'Se C'e un Aldila' Sono Fottuto: Vita e Cinema di Claudio Caligari' by Simone Isola and Fausto Trombettta, as well as 'Life as a B-Movie: Piero Vivarelli by Fabrizio Laurenti and Niccolo' Vivarelli, and Simone Scafidi's 'Fulci For Fake. There will also be an Italian short film in the Orizzonti section: 'Supereroi Senza Superpoteri' by Beatrice Baldacci.