OPEN ROADS: NEW ITALIAN CINEMA, May 29- June 5, 2025

[Chris Knipp]

FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER AND CINECITTÀ
ANNOUNCE THE 24rd EDITION OF
OPEN ROADS: NEW ITALIAN CINEMA, MAY 29–JUNE 5, 2025

FESTIVAL THREAD


The Sicilian Letters, The Time it Takes, Diamonds, The Battlefield, Where the Night Stands Still

14 features including the New York premiere of Opening Night film, Francesca Comencini’s The Time It Takes, with Fabrizio Gifuni in person

Scheduled to appear in person are Alessandro Cassigoli & Casey Kauffman, Gianluca De Serio & Massimiliano De Serio, Liryc Dela Cruz, Sara Fgaier, Alissa Jung, Silvia Luzi & Luca Bellino, Ferzan Özpetek, Antonio Piazza & Fabio Grassadonia, and Andrea Segr

New York, NY (May 1, 2025) – Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà announce the lineup for the 24th edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema, running from May 29 to June 5.

Open Roads: New Italian Cinema is the premier showcase for the most compelling voices in contemporary Italian filmmaking. This year’s edition presents 14 new feature films, ranging from works by acclaimed directors returning to Open Roads, to notable debuts by four new filmmakers—underscoring the breadth and vitality of Italian cinema today. Many of the filmmakers will be present to discuss their films. The festival opens with the New York premiere of Francesca Comencini’s latest film, The Time It Takes, which is nominated for six David di Donatello awards, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor for its star, Fabrizio Gifuni, who will be present for a Q&A. The film is a deeply personal cinematic autobiography about Comencini’s relationship with her legendary filmmaker father, Luigi Comencini. Romana Maggiora Vergano, who plays Francesca, won the Pasinetti Award for Best Actress at its Venice Film Festival debut.

“The lineup for this year’s edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema represents an Italian cinema which has never been more international, more responsive to social and political developments both at home and abroad, more adventurous in terms of both style and substance,” said Dan Sullivan, FLC Programmer. “I’m particularly struck by the number of younger, even debuting, directors in the festival this year: the future of Italian cinema is bright, and it’s exciting to catch these new talents at an early stage of their artistic developments.”

“In a context of very rapid changes for both the market and the audience, the excellent news emerging from the mosaic of titles in Open Roads 2025 is that Italian cinema is showing productive maturity,” said Manuela Cacciamani, CEO of Cinecittà. “It knows how to adapt to different challenges, it hits the box office and embraces new languages, it engages in international co-productions without forgetting its own history and roots. As Thierry Frémaux recently reminded us in Cannes, and as Dan Sullivan confirms here at Film at Lincoln Center, our cinema is experiencing a moment of vitality and talent. Our cinema, as the title of this event suggests, has all roads open, and the 14 films in the lineup give us a sense of awareness that everyone in the industry needs to have.”

Open Roads welcomes back several acclaimed filmmakers with a slate of North American and New York premieres. Highlights include Francesco Costabile’s Familia, a tense family drama and exploration of political extremism, nominated for eight Donatello Awards; Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio’s documentary Canone effimero, a tribute to the local musical customs of Italy’s varied regions, which received a Special Mention from the Documentary Award jury at the 2024 Berlinale; the North American premiere of Gianni Amelio’s Battleground, a gripping WWII parable about courage and compassion; Ferzan Özpetek’s Diamonds, an homage to costume design set in a 1970s Roman fashion house; and the latest film from Silvia Luzi and Luca Bellino, Luce, a portrait of a lonely leatherworker stifled by her surroundings.

Making their Open Roads debut are Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman with Vittoria, about a hairdresser navigating the world of adoption in search of a young girl who appears in her dreams, and Peter Kerekes with Wishing on a Star, a fiction/documentary hybrid that investigates the current state of human bonds through an astrologer and her efforts to help her clients find love.

Award-winning actor Elio Germano stars in two standout selections this year. He won Best Actor at the Rome Film Festival for his role as Enrico Berlinguer, former leader of the Italian Communist Party, in Andrea Segre’s The Great Ambition, which makes its North American premiere. Germano also appears alongside Toni Servillo in the New York premiere of Sicilian Letters by Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia, a bold take on the Italian crime film that earned multiple critics’ awards at Venice.

North American premieres of additional emerging voices from Italy making their first Open Roads appearances and feature film debuts are: Liryc Dela Cruz’s Where the Night Stands Still, centering on the reunion of three Filipino siblings and their lingering resentments after the eldest inherits a villa from her boss; Isabella Torre’s hypnotic Basileia, making its North American premiere following its Closing Film selection at the 2024 Venice Film Festival’s Venice Days sidebar, about the supernatural consequences of an illegal archaeological dig in southern Calabria; and Alissa Jung’s Paternal Leave, a sensitive story of a daughter reconnecting with her father, which made its world premiere at the Berlinale. Finally, the New York premiere of Sara Fgaier’s feature debut, Weightless, is about an amnesiac’s efforts to recover his memories of a forgotten love.

Open Roads: New Italian Cinema tickets will go on sale on Thursday, May 8 at noon, with an early access period for FLC Members starting Tuesday, May 6 at noon. Tickets are $17; $14 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $12 for FLC Members. See more and save with a 3+ Film Package ($15 for GP; $12 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $10 for FLC Members), and an All-Access Pass for $139 ($99 for Students), excluding the Opening Night film The Time It Takes.

Co-presented by Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà. Organized by Dan Sullivan of Film at Lincoln Center and by Carla Cattani, Griselda Guerrasio, Monique Catalino, and Rossella Rinaldi of Cinecittà, Rome.

Open Roads is supported in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute in NY and with the support of Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò NYU, ITA Airways, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

[Chris Knipp]

FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS
All films will screen at the Walter Reade Theater (165 W. 65th Street).



Opening Night
The Time It Takes / Il tempo che ci vuole
Francesca Comencini, 2024, Italy/France, 110m
Italian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
In this deeply personal film about her relationship with her father, legendary filmmaker Luigi Comencini, Francesca Comencini’s (Stories of Love That Cannot Belong to This World, Open Roads 2018) virtuosic work of cinematic autobiography paints a richly emotional picture of their changing bond. Young Francesca (first-time actress Anna Mangiocavallo) and her father Luigi (an astonishing Fabrizio Gifuni) live together during the Years of Lead; they share a love of cinema (Luigi is in the middle of shooting an adaptation of Pinocchio), but their love for one another is tested both by the passage of time and by the convulsions of this turbulent period in Italian politics. A film suffused with empathy and self-reflection, The Time It Takes finds Comencini in top form, rendering the intensity and complications of the father-daughter relationship with a rare authenticity. The film earned six Donatello Award nominations, and ​​Romana Maggiora Vergano, who plays the adult Francesca, won the Pasinetti Award for best actress at its Venice Film Festival debut. A Distrib Films release. [Compare: Francesca Comencini's In the Factory, (2007)]
Thursday, May 29 at 7:00pm – Q&A with Fabrizio Gifuni
Tuesday, June 3 at 4:00pm



Basileia
Isabella Torre, 2024, Italy, 90m
English, Italian, and Danish with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Nature seeks her revenge in Isabella Torre’s hypnotic debut feature, an enigmatic and powerfully atmospheric work that might best be described as an eco-horror film. Set in Aspromonte (a massif in southern Calabria), the film begins by introducing us to the region’s rugged, mist-shrouded landscape, before a mysterious figure known only as “the Irishman” appears. It turns out he is involved with an illegal archaeological dig, the results of which seem to unleash a supernatural wrath on those who would disrupt the balance between the human and natural domains…. A thoroughly stylish film of ideas disguised as an eerie genre exercise, Basileia is an impressive and provocative debut indeed. Closing Night at 2024 Venice Days/ Giornate Degli Autori.
Friday, May 30 at 9:00pm



Battleground / Campo di Battaglia
Gianni Amelio, 2024, Italy, 104m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Open Roads veteran Gianni Amelio (Lord of the Ants, Open Roads 2023) returns with this powerful parable about courage and compassion under extreme pressure. Alessandro Borghi is mesmerizing as Giulio, a doctor at a military hospital during WWI who does what he can to help wounded soldiers (and soldiers who have wounded themselves in an effort to be discharged). His foil is none other than fellow doctor Stefano (Gabriel Montesi), who is as harsh and severe with the soldiers as Giulio is accommodating and compassionate. An elegantly executed work of historical fiction, Battleground is a sober and profound meditation on the toll of war. Premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
Monday, June 2 at 6:00pm
Wednesday, June 4 at 1:30pm



Canone effimero
Gianluca De Serio, Massimiliano De Serio, 2024, Italy, 120m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
In their latest documentary, which received a Special Mention from the Documentary Award jury at the 2024 Berlinale, the De Serio brothers (Una Promessa, Open Roads 2021) pay tribute to the local musical customs of Italy’s disparate regions, capturing these traditions at risk of fading away. Divided into 11 sections, Canone effimero alternates between loving, languorous portraits of choir members, scholars of medieval musical theories, and specialists in arcane, mostly forgotten historical instruments, and the landscapes in which these figures undertake their cultural homage. Filming with a visual ingenuity that forms a mesmerizing counterpoint to the pleasures of listening to strange, beautiful music and of hearing experts speak intelligently about it, the De Serios honor their subjects with this meticulously, passionately assembled study of cultural traditions on the brink of vanishing. [Press kit.]
Friday, May 30 at 12:00pm – Q&A with Massimiliano De Serio and Gianluca De Serio
Thursday, June 5 at 3:30pm


Review by Paolo Innicenti

Diamonds / Diamanti
Ferzan Özpetek, 2024, Italy, 135m
Italian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
The great Ferzan Özpetek (Naples in Veils, Open Roads 2018) returns to Open Roads with his latest, an absorbing, humorous, and touching tribute to the majesty of the movie costume. Luisa Ranieri and Jasmine Trinca star as Alberta and Gabriella, two sisters who preside over a Roman fashion house during the 1970s; we follow as they and the virtuoso dressmakers they employ try to fulfill a challenging order from an Oscar-winning costume designer client, setting the stage for myriad dramas both within and outside the atelier. A considerable box office hit upon its Italian release, Diamonds is Özpetek at his very best, commanding a dazzling ensemble cast to achieve a rich, thoroughly entertaining love letter to screen clothes and the perseverance and talent of the women who make them. Winner of the David degli Spettatori (audience award) at the 2025 Donatello Awards. An Outsider Pictures release.
Thursday, May 29 at 3:30pm – Q&A with Ferzan Özpetek
Tuesday, June 3 at 6:30pm



Familia
Francesco Costabile, 2024, Italy, 120m
Italian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
A blog review
A harrowing, white-knuckle family portrait and meditation on the terrible appeal of political extremism, Francesco Costabile’s (The Code of Silence, Open Roads 2022) latest adapts Luigi Celeste’s memoir Non sarà sempre così, a staggering account of the author’s falling in with a group of ultra-right-wing skinheads. Luigi (Francesco Gheghi, winner of the Orizzonti Award for best actor at the 2024 Venice Film Festival) has grown up with his mother (an excellent Barbara Ronchi) and younger brother (Marco Cicalese) in the shadow of his violently abusive and mostly absent father (Francesco Di Leva). When his father reappears on the scene, Luigi finds himself caught between the imperative to protect his family from further trauma and the fraught sense of belonging he derives from running with a gang of fascists as his “chosen” family. Familia has been nominated for eight Donatello Awards.
Sunday, June 1 at 8:30pm
Thursday, June 5 at 8:45pm



The Great Ambition / Berlinguer. La grande ambizione
Andrea Segre, 2024, Italy/Belgium/Bulgaria, 123m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
The great Elio Germano stars as Enrico Berlinguer in Andrea Segre’s moving and intelligently plotted biopic, nominated for 15 Donatello Awards. The film follows Berlinguer between 1973 and 1978—as the then-leader of the Italian Communist Party, Berlinguer finds himself caught by the tides of history and the political convulsions of the 1970s. Germano, who took home the award for best actor at the Rome Festival, is excellent as a man who, in scenes both spectacularly public and intimately personal, gracefully bears the weight of the world on his shoulders while trying to preserve the integrity of his convictions.
Friday, May 30 at 3:00pm – Q&A with Andrea Segre
Thursday, June 5 at 6:00pm



Luce
Silvia Luzi, Luca Bellino, 2024, Italy, 95m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
A character study pitched at the boundary between reality and dreams, Silvia Luzi and Luca Bellino’s (Crater, Open Roads 2018) new feature, which premiered at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival, is an absorbing work that explores the subjectivity of a lonely woman stifled by her environment. Marianna Fontana stars as an anonymous leatherworker in mountainous southern Italy who leads a solitary life amid harsh industrial conditions. She enlists the help of a photographer to fly a drone over a prison wall in the hopes of connecting with her incarcerated father, and this becomes the inciting incident for a mesmerizing headlong journey into a realm beyond the true and the false, the real and the imagined. Fontana is entrancing as our on-screen surrogate, and Luzi and Bellino’s camera relentlessly traces the contours of her face to capture the transformation of desire into obsession.
Saturday, May 31 at 9:00pm – Q&A with Silvia Luzi and Luca Bellino



Paternal Leave
Alissa Jung, 2025, Italy/Germany, 113m
English, Italian, and German with English subtitles
North American Premiere
A touching story of familial reconnection, Alissa Jung’s debut feature, which had its world premiere at the 2025 Berlinale, orbits around the alluring and sensitive performances of its two lead actors. Leo (Juli Grabenhenrich) is a 15-year-old girl who has grown up in Germany without ever knowing her father, Paolo (Jung's real-life spouse, Luca Marinelli); upon learning of his identity, Leo sets out to meet Paolo, confronting him at a bar in coastal northern Italy. The experience leaves Paolo totally bewildered, but as the two spend more time together, a long overdue bond begins to take root. Marinelli is particularly moving, turning in a nuanced, dimensional performance as a father caught between the life he knows and the daughter he never had the chance to know. [Mostly in English.]
Saturday, May 31 at 6:00pm – Q&A with Alissa Jung
Wednesday, June 4 at 8:45pm



Sicilian Letters / Iddu
Antonio Piazza, Fabio Grassadonia, 2024, Italy/France, 122m
Italian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
In the new film by Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia ( Sicilian Ghost Story , Open Roads 2018; Salvo, New Directors/New Films 2014), Matteo (Elio Germano), a fugitive mob boss in hiding, begins a curious correspondence with a former acquaintance of his father’s, his godfather Catello (Toni Servillo), a corrupt politician fresh off a prison sentence. Their letters find the two men quickly re-forming their friendship, but this bond is complicated by the fact that Catello is not-so-secretly helping the police to locate and capture Matteo, plus Catello has his own agenda…. Inspired by real events and fueled by magnetic performances from Germano and Servillo, Sicilian Letters finds Piazza and Grassadonia once again revitalizing our sense of the Italian crime film. The film took home multiple critics’ awards at its Venice Film Festival premiere. (See Jessica Kiang's Variety review.)
Friday, May 30 at 6:00pm – Q&A with Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia
Wednesday, June 4 at 6:00pm



Vittoria
Alessandro Cassigoli, Casey Kauffman, 2024, Italy, 83m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Filmmaker Alessandro Cassigoli and journalist Casey Kauffman team up for their fourth feature-length collaboration, a powerful portrait of a woman navigating the vagaries of international adoption. Hairdresser Jasmine (Marilena Amato, a non-professional actress playing a version of herself) lives in Naples with her husband and three sons; following her father’s death, Jasmine has a recurring dream of a young girl running into her arms, and these dreams set in motion a quest for her to find this girl, risking her family’s tenuous stability in the process. A fascinating and complex work that uses reenactment to blur the lines between fiction and documentary, Vittoria is a deeply moving investigation into the maternal instinct and the psychological intricacies of adoption. The film had its world premiere in the Orizzonti Extra program at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
Sunday, June 1 at 6:00pm – Q&A with Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman
Tuesday, June 3 at 9:15pm



Weightless / Sulla terra leggeri
Sara Fgaier, 2024, Italy, 94m
Italian and French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
In her debut feature, which premiered at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival, Sara Fgaier has crafted an emotionally and formally sophisticated monument to the link between cinema and memory. Ethnomusicologist Gian (Andrea Renzi) has suddenly developed amnesia; following a failed suicide attempt, his daughter Miriam (Sara Serraiocco), whom he no longer recognizes, gives him a diary he wrote in his twenties that details a love affair with a mysterious woman. A deluge of flashbacks (punctuated with striking use of archival footage) follows as Gian seeks to recover his memory of this woman while also asking himself how he could’ve forgotten her in the first place. A stylish and assured debut, Weightless sensitively and thought through. TRAILER
Sunday, June 1 at 1:00pm – Q&A with Sara Fgaier
Wednesday, June 4 at 4:00pm



Where the Night Stands Still / Come la notte
Liryc Dela Cruz, 2025, Italy/Philippines, 75m
Tagalog and Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Three Filipino siblings who are all domestic workers living in Italy reunite at the villa that the eldest sister has inherited from her recently deceased boss. Not having seen each other in three years, their reunion dredges up old feelings, lingering resentments, and the melancholic distance that has formed between them in the intervening years. In his strikingly photographed black-and-white debut feature, which premiered at the 2025 Berlinale, Liryc Dela Cruz juxtaposes the pains and hopes of the siblings’ bond to their almost eternal-seeming setting, the villa asserting itself as one of the film’s most crucial characters, a still, well-worn witness to untold histories.
Sunday, June 1 at 3:30pm – Q&A with Liryc Dela Cruz
Tuesday, June 3 at 2:00pm



Wishing on a Star
Peter Kerekes, 2024, Italy/Croatia/Austria/Slovakia/Czech Republic, 99m
Italian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
A fiction/documentary hybrid that undertakes a charmingly idiosyncratic investigation into the present state of human connection, Peter Kerekes’s Wishing on a Star follows a Neapolitan astrologer and her efforts to help her clients find love. Her clients all face one domestic complication or another in pursuit of a relationship, so she advises them to set out on a trip to various locales whose astral signs might be more conducive to finding what their hearts desire. Kerekes renders the results with a nose for the absurd and (however inadvertently) profound, but also with a warmth, openness, and willingness to play with the formal properties of cinema to arrive at a tender, sophisticated study of the lengths people will go for a chance at happiness. The film premiered in the Orizzonti program at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
Monday, June 2 at 8:30pm

CINECITTÀ
Cinecittà S.p.A. is an Italian public company whose sole shareholder is the Ministry of Economy and Finance; shareholder rights are exercised by the Ministry of Culture in agreement with the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Cinecittà manages legendary Cinecittà’s Studios, promoting Italian cinema in the world as member of EFP, distributing Italian first and second time feature films and documentaries. Moreover, it manages “Archivio Luce” film and photographic Archive, that has been registered by UNESCO in the registry “Memory of the World.”

For more information, visit www.cinecitta.com.

FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER
Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) is a nonprofit organization that celebrates cinema as an essential art form and fosters a vibrant home for film culture to thrive. FLC presents premier film festivals, retrospectives, new releases, and restorations year-round in state-of-the-art theaters at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. FLC offers audiences the opportunity to discover works from established and emerging directors from around the world with a passionate community of film lovers at marquee events including the New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films.

[Chris Knipp]

OPEN ROADS: NEW ITALIAN CINEMA 2025

FOUR REVIEWS OF THE SERIES FILMS ARE UP NOW.

BASILEIA (Isabella Torre 2024)

Searching for treasure in the Italian South awakens the disquiet of woodland sylphs.

[Chris Knipp]

CANONE EFFIMERO (Gianlucca & Massimiliano De Serio 2024)
An enchanting documentary about local folkloric music traditions around Italy. Won special mentuon at the Berlinale.

[Chris Knipp]

VITTORIA (Alessandro Cassigoli, Casey Kauffman 2024)


A family plays themselves depicting their difficult international adoption process to bring a girl into a family of three boys. Compelling docu-drama develops the filmmakers' methods still further.

[Chris Knipp]

WHERE THE NIGHT STANDS STILL/COME LA NOTTE (Liryc Dela Cruz 2025)

Hushed drama of conflict among siblings in Rome depicts the Filipino diaspora.

Showtimes:
Sunday, June 1 at 3:30pm – Q&A with Liryc Dela Cruz
Tuesday, June 3 at 2:00pm

[Chris Knipp]

PATERNAL LEAVE (Alissa Jung 2025)

A teenage girl raised in Germany by her mother seeks out her absent, non-particiipating Italian father at a beach resort out of season. He is played by Italian star Luca Marinelli, who is the director's husband, and this is her first feature.
Showtimes:

Saturday, May 31 at 6:00pm – Q&A with Alissa Jung
Wednesday, June 4 at 8:45pm

[Chris Knipp]

FAMILIA (Francesco Costabile 2024

The modern tragedy of a dysfunctional working class Roman family seen in very Italian terms based on a true memoir. Holds you to the end.

Showtimes:

Sunday, June 1 at 8:30pm
Thursday, June 5 at 8:45pm

[Chris Knipp]

LUCE (Silvia Luzi, Luca Bellino 2024)

Dreamy illusion of a tanner worker who is troubled and afraid, poetic and strange but grounded in research and preparation.

Showtimes:

Saturday, May 31 at 9:00pm – Q&A with Silvia Luzi and Luca Bellino

[Chris Knipp]

THE TIME IT TAKES/IL TEMPO CHE CI VUOLE (Francesca Comencini 2024)

A portrait of the filmmaker's relationship growing up with he famouse filmmaker father, Luigi Comencini. It is spare, elegant, emotionally intense - and boldly egocentric since it never mentions that she had three sisters, one of whom, Cristina Comencini, also is a filmmaker. OPENING NIGHT FILM.

Showtimes:
Thursday, May 29 at 7:00pm – Q&A with Fabrizio Gifuni
Tuesday, June 3 at 4:00pm

[Chris Knipp]

WISHING ON A STAR (Peter Kerekes 2024)]

The filmmaker has made docu-fiction hybrid about an Udine astrologer called Luciana and her clients, whom she sends to celebrate their birthdays in far-flung places to change their fortunes. Did you know in Italy you don't say "Good luck," because that's bad luck? Instead you say "In bocca al lupo," which means "In the mouth of the wolf."

Showtime:
Monday, June 2 at 8:30pm

[Chris Knipp]

BATTLEFIELD (Gianni Amelio 2024)

Recreation of a northern Italian military hospital at the end of WWI, based on a novel. The ethical issues raised are deeply concerning, but the action unfortuantely is

Showtimes:
Monday, June 2 at 6:00pm
Wednesday, June 4 at 1:30pm

[Chris Knipp]

SICILIAN LETTERS/IDDU (Antonio Piazza, Fabio Grassadonia 2024)

Film tells the actual story of how a hidden mafioso was tracked down through correspondence with his godfather, in cooperation with police. Two great Italian film actors, Elio Germano and Tonni Servillo playing the leads don't quite keep this film from being rather slow-moving and hard to follow.

Showtimes were:

Friday, May 30 at 6:00pm – Q&A with Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia
Wednesday, June 4 at 6:00pm

[Chris Knipp]

THE GREAT AMBITION /BERLINGUER. LA GRANDE AMBITIZIONE (Andrea Segre 2024)

Elio Germano excels in this biopic of Enrico Berlinger - Italian communist party leader in key years of the Italian Communist Party. Lots of real footage and history at a time of the Red Brigades of the Seventies.

Included in Open Roads, the Italian film series co-sponsored by Cinecittà and Film at Lincoln Center (May 29-Jun. 5, 2025). Showtimes were:


Friday, May 30 at 3:00pm – Q&A with Andrea Segre
Thursday, June 5 at 6:00pm

[Chris Knipp]

Open Roads 2025: best films.

I'd say it was a good year, ranging from the lighthearted and frivolous (CANONE EFFIMERO, WISING ON A STAR) to the serious and informative (a biopic, BERLINGUER/THE GREAT AMBITION, about Italian communist leader Enrico Berlinguer), but the quality seemed high throughout.

PATERNAL LEAVE (Alissa Jung 2025). The big Italian star Luca Marinelli is a surprise bravely playing an irresponsible dad confronted by his teenage daughter raised in Germany who's never seen him and doesn't speak a word of Italian. There are genuinely fresh and real moments here. Most of this is in some version of English. From the Berlinale.

CANONE EFFIMERO (Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio 2024). This eccentric documentary tour of Italy for local and folkloric music is not at all comprehsensive but has a quirky charm with its collection of polyvocal songs, music ethnology and oral tradition. Radically contemporary, energetic, close to nature, local. Lyrical. Won a special mention at the Berlinale.

WISHING ON A STAR (Peter Kerekes 2024). A local astrologer "cures" people's ills by doing arcane calculations on her clients and assigning them to go to some remote place to celebrate their birthdays and bring about the changes they dream of. This is a hybrid, tweaking footage of actual people and an actual astrologer, Luciana de Leoni D'Asparedo, of Udine in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of Italy. Premiered at Venice Orizzonti.

DIAMONDS/DIAMANTI (Ferzan Özpetek 2024). Sure it's glitzy and a bit catty and sometimes very broad, but this is a sincerre homage to women surrounding a famous costumer in Rome that has lots of stories to tell and is handsome to look at. A popular film in Italy, it won the audience award at the 2025 Donatello Awards.

THE TIME IT TAKES/IL TEMPO CHE CI VUOLE (Francesca Comencini 2024). There's deep Italian cinematic history here: this is an autobiographical film about herself as a tiny girl and her link with famous father Luigi Comencini, who made some of the signature movies of Italian "neorealismo rosa,"or pink neorealism, including famous films in the grand era of Italian postwar recovery and cultural triumph with great stars like Vittorio De Sica and Gina Lollabrigida. A poignant memory. From the Venice festival.