For a few days in December the Catalan city became the capital of Italian cinema, with the 7th Barcelona Festival of Italian Cinema. From the 14th to 18th Spanish audiences could watch the best recent Italian films, with a selection of 10 features and 6 short films. The free screenings were followed by discussions with the directors or actors of the films shown.
The festival opened with Mario Martone’s Capri-Revolution, presented by the film’s leading actress, Marianna Fontana. Martone’s film won the Pasinetti dei Giornalisti Cinematografici Award at the last Venice Film Festival. The audience could then see the first feature film by brothers Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, Boys Cry, which had already won the Silver Ribbon for Best New Director and the Audience Award at Annecy’s Festival of Italian Film. The film is about two high school students, played by Andrea Carpenzano and Matteo Olivetto, who start a life of crime after a car accident.
Among the films screened were Edoardo de Angelis’ Il vizio della speranza, which won the Audience Award at the Rome Festival, and L’ospite, Duccio Chiarini’s second feature. Two films closed the festival: Letizia Lamartire’s Saremo giovani e bellissimi, and Stefano Savona’s Samouni Road, a documentary filmed in the Gaza Strip.
Barcelona Festival of Italian Film is labelled “a festival of festivals”, because it brings together the year’s best Italian films in a single event, offering a large number of films not seen in Spain. The festival’s aim is to make Barcelona a central platform for getting Italian films shown across Spain.
The event was organized by the Instituto Luce Cinecitta, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of Barcelona, the Italian Consulate and with the help of local sponsors.
Sources: https://www.metropoliabierta.com, https://cinemagavia.es
