Italian Film Festival streams live-action Pinocchio, Ennio Morricone western, and more, January 8 to 21
Hits from Venice and Rome festivals streaming now via VIFF Connect
The Vancouver Italian Film Festival moves online this year, running today through January 21 and boasting a four-film range of everything from live-action animation to a spaghetti western.
Now in its eighth year, the event is a copresentation between VIFF, Il Centro-Italian Cultural Centre, and the Consulate General of Italy in Vancouver. Check goviff.org/2021-iff for all the details of the fest, which streams via VIFF Connect.
The fest features a new, acclaimed live-action version of Pinocchio, with Italian star Roberto Benigni (Life is Beautiful; Down by Law) as Geppetto. Directed by the versatile Matteo Garrone (Gomorrah; Dogman; Tale of Tales), the artful, landmark adaptation was a huge hit in Italy last Christmas and is aimed at viewers of all ages.
Elsewhere, hot from opening the Venice Film Festival in the fall, is the new film from the director of Our Lives (La nostra vita), Daniele Luchetti. The Ties (Lacci) is a piercing study of adultery and betrayal, with superb performances from Alba Rohrwacher and Luigi Lo Cascio as the central couple.
Another highlight is Sin (Il peccato), directed by Andrei Konchalovski, a profound and unsettling historical drama starring Alberto Testone as the tormented 16th-century artist Michelangelo. Sin was the closing-night film at the Rome Film Festival.
The fest’s final offering is a tribute to the late, great composer Ennio Morricone, who passed away this summer. A Film Studies lecture by Will Ross follows a viewing of Sergio Corbucci’s extraordinary, bleak, and wintry spaghetti western The Great Silence (Il grande silenzio). Morricone scored the 1968 film, which had an indelible influence on Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful 8. Made in the Dolomites, it stars Jean Louis Trintignant as a mute gunfighter at odds with a German madman (Klaus Kinski) who’s a vicious bounty hunter known as Loco. The screening and its illustrated lecture are exclusive to pass holders.
This post was sponsored by VIFF