North American Premiere
Felice (Pierfrancesco Favino) returns to Naples and for the first time in 40 years. His mother is ailing, nearly blind, and he’s dismayed by how she’s living. But he’s also struck powerfully by memories of his adolescence, memories which mix warmth, joy, regret, and shame. As the days turn to weeks, this flood of memories glues him to the city. He’s not proud of who he used to be back then, but he knows there is unfinished business here; that he must reconnect with his best friend from those days, Oreste, now a feared crime boss in a squalid part of town, and make peace between them.
Director Mario Mortine (The King of Laughter; Leopardi) is himself a Neopolitan, and the city is a fascinating character in this film, alternately attractive and ugly, seductive and sinister. Favino, one of Italy’s best actors (he was Bellocchio’s The Traitor, though you may also recognize him from Hollywood movies like Rush and Angels and Demons) artfully conveys Felice’s dangerous compulsion in a carefully layered performance. Martone begins the movie with a quotation from the poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini and one senses he would approve.
Presented by
Pierfrancesco Favino, Francesco Di Leva, Tommaso Ragno, Aurora Quattrocchi, Sofia Essaidi
Italy/France
2022
In Italian with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Sun Never Sets
At the suggestion of her much older (divorced) boyfriend, Wendy (Dakota Fanning) takes a summer to reevaluate her life and date other people. She's reluctant at first, but then reconnects with an old flame... A gentle indie comedy from Joe Swanberg.
Hanging by a Wire
The Himalayas, Aug 22, 2023: a cable car bearing 8 passengers (six of them schoolkids) is left dangling 900 feet above the ground when two out of three cables snap. This nailbiting documentary recounts the increasingly frantic rescue attempts.
A Sad and Beautiful World
This Lebanese love story chronicles the romance between a level-headed businesswoman and a romantic restauranteur across several decades in wartorn Beirut. It's funny, charming, melancholy and you'll feel it all.
September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill + Q&A
In the early 1990s, director Larry Weinstein and music producer Hal Wilner brought together an extraordinary line up of performers to pay tribute to the great German composer Kurt Weill, among them Nick Cave, Lou Reed, PJ Harvey and Elvis Costello.
Union County
In this authentically grounded addiction recovery drama, Will Poulter and Noah Centenio are foster brothers trying to get out from their dependence on opioids through a progressive government program in Ohio.
Late Fame
Based on a novella by Arthur Schnitzler (Eyes Wide Shut) this is a sly, poignant comedy about vanity and art from director Kent Jones, starring Willem Dafoe as a mailman belatedly acclaimed for a book of poetry he wrote in his youth.
Credits
Executive Producer
Gennaro Fasolino, Chiara Grassi
Producer
Luciano Stella, Roberto Sessa, Maria Carolina Terzi, Carlo Stella
Screenwriter
Mario Martone, Ippolita di Majo
Cinematography
Paolo Carnera
Editor
Jacopo Quadri
Art Director
Carmine Guarino
Director
Mario Martone
Mario Martone is a director of theatre, cinema, and opera. He created the Falso Movimento theatrical company in the 1980s and then founded Teatri Uniti with Toni Servillo, through which he created his first independent films. In 1999, he created Teatro India in Rome. In 2018, the Museo Madre in Naples dedicated a large personal exhibition to him. During the pandemic, he adapted Barbiere di Siviglia and La Traviata for television. He recently came back in front of a live audience with the staging of Goliarda Sapienza’s Il filo di mezzogiorno.
Filmography: We Believed (2010); Leopardi (2014); Capri-Revolution (2018); The King of Laughter (2021)