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Cinema Italian Style, November 22-24, 2019
We invite you to celebrate Italy’s best cinematic offerings at the 1st edition of Cinema Italian Style in San Francisco, November 22-24, 2019 at the Vogue Theatre.
The festival opens on November 22 with a private screening of The Traitor, Italy’s entry to the Academy Awards® 2020 for Best Foreign Language Film, by renowned director Marco Bellocchio. The Traitor ignites the screen with an incendiary Mafia drama about Tommaso Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino), the man who brought down Cosa Nostra. The Traitor will be followed by The Invisible Witness, a clever thriller by Stefano Marradi, featuring Riccardo Scamarcio as a tech entrepreneur who is awakened by the police in a hotel room next to the dead body of his lover.
Closing the festival on Sunday, November 24 is Daniele Luchetti’s comedy Ordinary Happiness, which follows Paolo (Pierfrancesco Diliberto), as he attempts to cram life’s small moments of happiness into 90 additional minutes of life granted to him by a bureaucratic angel.
Cinema Italian Style is a dynamic film festival showcasing the top new Italian films from emerging filmmakers and seasoned masters alike. Seven narrative feature films—including dramas, comedies and a mystery—will screen at this year’s festival, highlighting the extraordinary talent of Italy’s greatest actors. Cinema Italian Style coincides with the 4th Week of Italian Cuisine in the World, and the festival will also present one documentary, Food Makers: The Future of Nutrition, about the state of food and international food policy, along with speakers and sampling of foods of the future.
Cinema Italian Style is co-presented by the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco and the legendary Istituto Luce Cinecittà, with the support of the Italian Consulate General in San Francisco.
| FRI 22 | 6:00pm THE TRAITOR* |
9:00pm THE INVISIBLE WITNESS |
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| SAT 23 | 3:00pm VIVERE |
6:00pm VOLARE |
8:30pm THE FIRST KING |
| SUN 24 | 2:15pm FOODMAKERS |
5:00pm THE VICE OF HOPE |
7:30pm ORDINARY HAPPINESS |
Friday, November 22 | 6:00pm (*Invitation & Pass Holders Only)
THE TRAITOR (Il traditore)
Veteran auteur Marco Bellocchio (Vincere) ignites the screen with an incendiary Mafia drama about Tommaso Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino), the man who brought down Cosa Nostra. In the early 1980’s, an all-out war rages between cut-throat Sicilian mafia bosses. Tommaso Buscetta, a made man, flees Italy to hide out in Brazil. Back home, scores are being settled and Buscetta watches from afar as his sons and brother are killed in Palermo, knowing that he may be next. Arrested and extradited to Italy by the Brazilian police, Buscetta makes a move that will change everything for the Mafia: he decides to meet with Judge Giovanni Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi) and betray the eternal vow he made to Cosa Nostra, which leads to the notorious Maxi Trial. The Traitor was nominated for the Palme D’Or at Cannes and is Italy’s submission to the Academy Award® for Best Foreign Language Film.
Dir. Marco Bellocchio, Italy/France/Germany/Brazil, 2019, 135 min
Italian, Portuguese, English, with English subtitles
Buy a Pass *Invitation & Pass Holders Only
Friday, November 22 | 9:15pm
THE INVISIBLE WITNESS (Il testimone invisibile) 
Adriano (Riccardo Scamarcio), a tech entrepreneur, is awakened by the police in a hotel room next to the dead body of his lover, Laura (Miriam Leone). The door was locked from the inside and there is no evidence of anybody else in the room. Despite his claims of innocence, he is charged with murder. His attorney (Paola Sambo) sends veteran criminal attorney Virginia Ferrara (Maria Paiato)—who has never lost a trial—to craft a defense strategy. The two have only three hours to prepare the case, discredit a key witness who is accusing Adriano, and find the evidence confirming his innocence. With his back to the wall, Adriano is forced to tell the full truth to his lawyer, but will that be enough? The Invisible Witness features a faced paced script and stellar performances by Scamarcio, Leone and Paiato, supported by a top-notch ensemble cast.
Dir. Stefano Mordini, Italy, 2018, 102 min, in Italian with English subtitles
Saturday, November 23 | 3:00pm
VIVERE (Vivere)
The Attorre family lives in a semi-detached villa in a decorous Roman suburb, next door to a prying neighbor, Perind (Marcello Font of Dogman). Luca (Adriano Giannini), a frustrated freelance journalist and creative conjurer of fake news, struggles to support Susi (Michela Ramazzotti), a former ballerina who now teaches ballet to overweight women, and Lucilla, a quiet and imaginative six-year-old who suffers from severe asthma. Pierpaolo, the 17-year-old son of Luca from a previous relationship—who lives with his well-to-do mother under the aegis of his powerful grandfather—visits often and supports them economically. When Mary Ann, a winsome Irish au pair (Rosin O'Donovan), comes to take care of Lucilla, everyone’s role in the family shifts.
Dir. Francesca Archibugi, Italy, 2019, 103 min, in Italian with English subtitles
Saturday, November 23 | 6:00pm
VOLARE (Tutto il mio folle amore)
Willi (Claudio Santamaria) returns sixteen years after the birth of his autistic son Vincent (Giulio Pranno), and breaks into the home of his ex-girlfriend Elena (Valeria Golino) and her partner Mario (Diego Abatantuono), who adopted Vincent. Willi, a boozing lounge singer, wants to connect with the boy, but Elena is furious and throws him out. But when Willi discovers that Vincent has hidden away in the back of his pick-up truck en route to a tour of Slovenia, a musical and emotional journey begins that will change their lives and seal their bond.
Dir. Gabriele Salvatores, Italy, 2019, 97 min, in Italian with English subtitles
Saturday, November 23 | 8:30pm
THE FIRST KING: BIRTH OF AN EMPIRE (Il primo re)
In this swashbuckling epic, Matteo Rovere brings us the mythic story of twin shepherd brothers, Romulus and Remus, one of whom will found the Roman empire. In 800 B.C., a prophecy foretells that one of the brothers—who are both hardened by the elements and suckled by a she-wolf—will build a world-spanning empire, but the other will die at his brother’s hand. In this swordfight drama (featuring dialogue in a painstakingly researched, authentic archaic Latin), love, ambition and fratricide coalesce in a searing story about the most tragic of sacrifices, from which Rome will rise.
Dir. Matteo Rovere, Italy, 2019, 127 min, in Latin with English subtitles
Sunday, November 24 | 2:15pm
SPECIAL FEATURE: DOCUMENTARY FOLLOWED BY TASTING 
FOOD MAKERS: THE FUTURE OF NUTRITION (Food Makers)
Enrica Cavalli’s engaging documentary chronicles the round-the-world journey of fifteen students of the Food Innovation Program (based in Reggio Emilia), to find out how food is changing. To study the food of the future, writer Nick Difino and director Cavalli followed the students as they traversed cities in ten countries (Boston, Davis, San Francisco, Kyoto, London, Shanghai, Singapore, Tel Aviv, Maastricht, Wageningen, Bologna, the Italian Food Valley and Puglia) to meet and interview people who are “Food Heroes.” We live in an ever-growing global community, where what we eat and how we produce affects the whole life of our planet. On one hand, over two billion people have problems accessing good food and on the other, over one billion suffer from obesity. This documentary is a resounding call for a better food system and a more democratic international food policy.
Dir. Enrica Cavalli, Italy, 2018, 48 min, in English
Sunday, November 24 | 5:00pm
THE VICE OF HOPE (Il vizio della speranza)
Edoardo De Angelis, director of the critically acclaimed Indivisible, returns to the Neapolitan coastal area with the beautifully told tale of Maria (Pina Turco), a young woman forced by economic circumstances to work as a trafficker of paid surrogate mothers, transporting them clandestinely along the Volturno river. But when one of the pregnant women disappears, Maria is threatened by her complicated boss, Zi’Mari (Maria Confalone) and has to find the missing woman. Accompanied by her trusty pit bull, Maria encounters a world of wide-open spaces but narrowing choices.
Dir. Edoardo De Angelis, Italy, 2018, 96 min, in Italian with English subtitles
Sunday, November 24 | 7:30pm
ORDINARY HAPPINESS (Momenti di trascurabile felicità) 
Paolo (Pif), a Sicilian engineer who is married with two children, drives his scooter with abandon. In a daily act of bravado, he crosses an intersection with the light changing to red, and gets hit by a truck and dies. What if, because of a miscalculation in Paradise, you got an extra hour and a half after death and a chance to achieve what really counts in life, enjoying the people you love most: your partner, your children, and your friends? How do you cram life’s small moments of happiness—parenting, marital bliss, sex, and soccer—into an hour and half?
Dir. Daniele Luchetti, Italy, 2019, 93 min, in Italian with English subtitles
PRESS:
Contact LARSEN ASSOCIATES
Tel. (415) 957-1205
karen@larsenassc.com
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SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Sony Pictures Classics
Karen & John Diefenbach
Jan Shrem & Maria Manetti Shrem
Hal Rowland, The Big Picture
STAFF:
Italian Cultural Institute Director: Annamaria Di Giorgio
Istituto Luce Cinecittà: Camilla Cormanni
Festival Producer: Nancy Fishman
Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco: Administration: Manlio Gullotta; Marketing & Operations: Franca Cavallaro, Marco Lovato; Information Desk: Gianmaria Mussio
Istituto Luce Cinecittà: Marco Cicala
Publicity: Karen Larsen, Will Zang, Joel Shepard
Designer: Julie Ann Yuen
Volunteer Coordinators: Ninfa Dawson & Beverly Thorman
House Managers: Brad Robinson, Eugene Caputi
Projectionist: Jon Bastian
Photographer: Enrica Cavalli
Vogue Theatre: Adam Bergeron, Junior Perez, Malcolm Johnson, Chloe Ginnever, Harry Nordlinger, Dylan Lockey
Ticketing Services: Box Cubed: Ben Armington, Mitchell Vaughn
Volunteer Coordinators: Ninfa Dawson, Bev Thorman
Volunteers: Yvonne Leong, Isabel Stephenson, Audrey Moi, Mary Murphy, Simon Kong, Allen Klein, Dana Miller, Kate Shelly, Nina Moore, Dominic Tsang
Make a date to view the best in Italian contemporary cinema and brush up on your language skills at the same time! Bring friends and family--group tickets and discounted passes available.
Andiamo al cinema!
