Congratulations to director Michele Alhaique, nominated for the Mario Verdone Award for Senza Nessuna Pietà,
The European Film Festival, the Italian National Union for Cinema Journalists and the Experimental Cinematograph Centre have compiled the list of nominees who must be newcomers under the age of 35, and the winner will be decided by the Verdones, Carlo, Luca and Silvia.
Dedicated to Mario Verdone, Carlo Verdone’s father and Christian De Sica’s Father-in-law, the prize set up in 2010 by the European Film Festival, to award young directors.
The list of previous winners is an amazing collection of directors and their films that did not get enough, if any, attention in the US: Susanna Nicchiarelli for Cosmonauta, Aureliano Amadei for 20 Cigarettes, Andrea Segre for Shun Li and the Poet, Claudio Giovannesi for Alì Blue Eyes, and Matteo Oleotto for Zoran, My Nephew the idiot.
Congratulations to this year’s nominee, Michele Alhaique for Senza Nessuna Pietà.
Pierfrancesco Favino gained fifty pounds and shows every bit of his star potential in director Michele Alhaique’s ‘Senza Nessuna Pietà’.
Screened in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizon section, ‘Without Pity’ would do well in America; Pierfrancesco Favino has already proved himself a strong crossover to audiences in the US ( Rush, World War Z) and Greta Scarano could be the next Emma Stone if she so chose. We’ll see more of her.
Mimmo, played by Favino, is part of a crime family but is happier at his day job as a construction worker. Having been left fatherless at an early age, his uncle raised him and expects his bruiser nephew to provide muscle when debts need to be collected. Mimmo is perfectly capable but clearly unhappy about his lot in life, destined, it seems, to live it out in a clinically depressed state.
When his spoiled and obnoxious cousin Manuel (Adriano Giannini) wants him to pick up and babysit a young prostitute, played by the very beautiful Greta Scarano, a protective side emerges from Mimmo. “Tanya” has been hired for a party but when delivered to Manuel, Mimmo sees that she’s in trouble and comes to her rescue, knowing full well that in doing so he’s signed his own death warrant.
There’s a kind of “beauty and the beast” quality to Mimmo and Tanya’s love story, as Tanya begins to care for him and then literally cares for him when he is punished for going against the family. They are a bit of an odd couple, but the chemistry is there and when they meet, you can see the relief in their eyes. In their “hard-knock lives, they’d never considered that they might find someone who actually want the best for them.
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