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La Chimera film image

La Chimera

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Alice Rohrwacher’s first feature since the widely acclaimed Happy As Lazzaro five years ago is an exhilaratingly unpredictable, mysterious, rough and tumble tale of a disheveled English tomb raider living on the margins amongst a roisterous group of Italian bohemians: singers, smugglers, peasants and petty thieves. Even in this rum company Arthur (Josh O’Connor) is an odd duck, but he’s at the heart of their operations because he has the gift of divination: he sniffs out ancient Etruscan graves, and with them treasure troves of artifacts buried with the dead. Rohrwacher’s story (she wrote the original screenplay) could be called oblique and whimsical, but her movie is rooted in the rude, earthy tradition of Pasolini, the Tavianis and Roberto Rossellini (whose daughter Isabella has an extended cameo here as the mother of Arthur’s beloved, missing Beniamina); that is to say, it’s a vivid and authentic film of the land and the people who live on it, not to mention those who came before and are buried underneath.

 

Best Screenplay, Grand Prize of the Jury Cannes 2023

 

Presented by

Director
Cast

Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Alba Rohrwacher, Carol Duarte, Vincenzo Nemolato

Credits
Country of Origin

Italy/France/Switzerland

Year

2023

Series

Special Presentations

Language

In Italian and English with English subtitles

18+
130 min
Comedy Drama Women Directors

Book Tickets

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Credits

Executive Producer

Eli Bush, Jeff Deutchman, Alexandra Henochsberg, Alessio Lazzareschi, Manuela Melissano, Pierre-Francois Piet

Producer

Carlo Cresto-Dina

Screenwriter

Alice Rohrwacher

Cinematography

Hélène Louvart

Editor

Nelly Quettier

Production Design

Emita Frigato

Director

Alice Rohrwacher headshot

Alice Rohrwacher

Alice Rohrwacher was born in Fiesole and studied in Turin and Lisbon. She wrote and played music for the theater before being drawn to cinema, where she began working as a documentary film editor. Her first full-length film, Corpo Celeste (2011) premiered at Cannes in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs. Her second film, The Wonders (2014) won the Grand Prix at Cannes. She was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Live Action Shorts category for Le pupille (2023).

Filmography: Corpo Celeste (2011); The Wonders (2014); Happy as Lazarro (2018)

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