These films have US distribution deals and we’ll help you watch for them.
Il Racconto Dei Racconti (Tale of Tales) IFC Films
Matteo Garrone’s first English-language film premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival stars Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, John C. Reilly, Toby Jones, Shirley Henderson, Hayley Carmichael, Bebe Cave and Alba Rohrwacher.
The film is inspired by the fairytales by Giambattista Basile, centering on the rulers of three neighboring kingdoms put to the test when magic enters the picture. Hayek plays a happy queen who is living unhappily until an ominous figure offers a dangerous bargain.
Cloro (Chlorine) Uncork’d Entertainment Date TBA
17-year-old Jenny (Sara Serraiocco) is a normal teenager from Ostia who loves her friends and her synchronized swimming team, but her mother dies, and her world falls apart. The death of a parent would have been traumatizing enough, but for Jenny, the tragedies pile up when her father suffers a mental collapse and stops caring for his daughter and 8-year-old son.
When the bank forecloses on their house in Ostia and her father still isn’t snapping out of it, Uncle Tondino tells them to return to the family’s hometown in the mountains of Abruzzo. He gives them a run down cabin to live in, but that’s about the extent of his charity; he leaves Jenny and her brother Fabrizio to figure the rest out.
READ MY INTERVIEW WITH SARA SERRAIOCCO
I Nostri Ragazzi (The Dinner) Film Movement (Available to Film Movement Members 12/1/15)
With its cast to die for, Luigi Lo Cascio, Alessandro Gassman, Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Barbora Bobulova, I Nostri Ragazzi premiered last year in the Giornate Degli Autori or “Venice Days” section.
I’m a big fan of Herman Koch’s The Dinner, so I was surprised and delighted to find a movie that actually improved the book. In the book, the major part of the dialogue took place over the course of one unpleasant evening, it didn’t work as well for me as the movie’s more natural plot progression and in fact, director Ivano De Matteo’s film version corrected the mistakes of the novel.
When two brothers, more for appearance sake than anything else, get together with wives that hate each other for a monthly dinner, it’s not fun for anybody but it’s just something one does. The monotony of the family tradition might have continued forever had it not been for something their kids got involved in, something worse than anyone could have expected.
La Giovinezza (Youth) Fox Searchlight
Paolo Sorrentino’s latest English language film stars Michael Caine, Rachel Weisz, and Jane Fonda, Harvey Keitel and Paul Dano.and follows two longtime friends vacationing in the Swiss Alps. Caine plays Fred, an acclaimed composer and conductor, who brings along his daughter (Weisz) and best friend Mick (Keitel), a renowned filmmaker. While Mick scrambles to finish the screenplay for what he imagines will be his last important film, Fred has no intention of resuming his musical career. The two men reflect on their past, each finding that some of the most important experiences can come later in life
Vergine Giurata (Sworn Virgin) Strand Releasing
Laura Bispuri’s modern-day folk story of Hana (Alba Rohrwacher), whose life is dictated by the tradition of her northern Albanian homeland. There, women can’t hold a man’s job, smoke, drink, or carry firearms, UNLESS, they give up their femininity. For a variety of different reasons (and I am guessing homosexuality is one of them) women can renounce their gender, and live as men, but they must swear to remain virgins.
I Love Italian Everything 