Open Roads: New Italian Cinema At Lincoln Center 2022

[Chris Knipp]

SWING RIDE/CALCINCULO (Chiara Bellosi 2022)

Despite a prize-winning screenplay, this story of an overweight teen and the trans person she bonds with at a fair fails to soar, even on the crucial sing ride. This outsider-bonding film falls short in both emotion and narrative content. The director's second feature and the second to debut a the Berlinale.

In Open Roads: New Italian Cinema at the Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center.
Friday, June 10 at 6:00pm (Q&A with Chiara Bellosi)
Monday, June 13 at 1:00pm

[Chris Knipp]

ON OUR WATCH/E NOI COME STRONZI RIMANEMMO A GUARDARE (Pif 2021)

A satire on our subservience to tech giants who, it says, are making all mankind slaves to algorithms. My problem is that there's nothing particularly Italian about this. The other problem is that it's true, and therefore not very funny. But Pif - Pierfrancesco Diliberto - whose THE MAFIA ONLY KILLS IN SUMMER I previously reviewed, is an excellent social critic. Here, he sets his focus on a much vaster subject.

[Chris Knipp]

THE INNER CAGE/ARIAFERMA (Federico di Costanzo 2021)

The director has a way with confining spaces and slow burns and this, his best yet, focuses on a nearly empty prison in Sardinia where a few remaining prisoners and a whole company of retained guards to mind them find a common humanity in new circumstances. No violence, no breakout: all genre expectations defied. Outstanding acting led by Toni Servillo and Silvio Orlando. I was impressed by the painterly, charoscuro cinematography and the periodically astonishing sound effects - an a cappella choir; orchestral clapping.

In the June 9-15, 2022 FLC-Cinecitta series Open Roads: New Italian Cinema at the Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center.

Sunday, June 12 at 8:15pm
Monday, June 13 at 3:30pm

[Chris Knipp]

THE LEGIONNAIRE/IL LEGIONARIO (Hleb Papou 2021)

Two brothers born in Italy of black African parents have chosen lives that make them into enemies. Whatever its faults this is an intense, exiting picture of a new multicultural Italy. The director, now 31, came from Belarus at 11 and now is an Italian citizen.

FLC-Cinecittà 2012 Jun. 9-15, 2022 series Open Roads: New Italian Cinema.

Saturday, June 11 at 12:00pm (Q&A with Hleb Papou)
Wednesday, June 15 at 4:00pm

[Chris Knipp]

LEONORA ADDIO (Paolo Taviani 2022)

For obvious reasons the most touching film of the series and the most deeply connected to Italian cultural and cinematic traditions. It is two segments, an hour-long one pursuing the complicated fate of writer Luigi Pirandello's ashes, and a half-hour one dramatizing one of Pirandello's last stories, "Il chiodo," "The Nail," about a lonely Sicilian boy's senseless murder of a red-headed girl. All is made more resonant due to the recent death of Paolo's brother and life-long filmmaking partner, Vittorio.