Now in its 33rd year, the AFI European Union Film Showcase continues its tradition of bringing the best in European cinema to our audiences. This year’s Showcase is presented online for the first time; all films are available to viewers in the AFI Silver’s home region of Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC, and 29 films are available to view throughout the United States and U.S. Territories.
This year's Showcase features 48 films representing 25 EU member states, including award winners, regional box-office hits, debut works by up-and-coming talents and new works by leading auteurs, plus seven of the top contenders for this year's Academy Award® for Best International Feature Film and 12 U.S. and North American premieres.
Four Italian movies are part of this year’s selection: Assandira by Salvatore Mereu, Favolacce (Bad Tales) by Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, I Predatori (The Predators) by Pietro Castellitto and Buio (Darkness) by Emanuela Rossi.
U.S. Premiere
ASSANDIRA
Available December 4, 2020 at 9:00 AM - December 20, 2020 at 11:45 PM
Italy, 2020, color, 128 min. In English, Italian, Sardinian and German with English subtitles.
Please note: this title is available to viewers located in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC.
Based on the novel of the same name by author and anthropologist Giulio Angioni, the fifth feature from Salvatore Mereu (PRETTY BUTTERFLIES) is a powerful, slow-burn thriller set in the Sardinian countryside in the late 1990s. Following a devasting fire that has destroyed his agritourism farmhouse "Assandira" and killed his son Mario (Marco Zucca), former shepherd Costantino Saru (author and actor Gavino Ledda, PADRE PADRONE) recounts the events that preceded the suspicious blaze to the inspector assigned to the case (Corrado Giannetti, PIOVE DESERTO). Told in flashback, the mystery unfolds to reveal how Mario and his German wife Grete (Anna König, TV's DARK) took over the abandoned Saru family farmhouse to turn it into a destination for European tourists wanting an "authentic" experience living among Sardinian shepherds. Initially resistant, Costantino finally relented, and the business became a big success, boosting the fragile local economy. But lurking beneath outward prosperity, deep fissures lie between father and son, nature and its commodification and cultural heritage and its appropriation. ASSANDIRA is a rural neo-noir, a psychological thriller, a classic detective story and an astute examination of tradition and modernity, all rolled into one.
BUY TICKET
U.S. Premiere
BAD TALES [FAVOLACCE]
Available December 6, 2020 at 9:00 AM - December 20, 2020 at 11:45 PM
Italy/Switzerland, 2020, color, 98 min. In Italian with English subtitles.
Please note: this title is available to viewers located anywhere in the United States and U.S. Territories
A twisted gothic fairy tale set in a southern suburb of Rome, the impressive second feature by the D'Innocenzo brothers (BOYS CRY, screenwriters of DOGMAN) transpires with the haunting atmosphere of a dream that gradually transforms into a waking nightmare. A group of families, connected in various ways, live their lives just outside of Rome in not-so-quiet desperation. Through a series of vicious vignettes, we see parents committing casual acts of cruelty against their children who, in turn, also wreak havoc. Beautifully realized, with a standout performance from Elio Germano (HIDDEN AWAY, LEOPARDI, LUCIA'S GRACE) as an unstable, unemployed father, BAD TALES builds to a memorable and cutting finale. Savage and certainly more bitter than sweet, this blackly comedic satire is the reward for the ambition and originality of its young filmmakers' daring vision. (Note adapted from London Film Festival.)
BUY TICKET
U.S. Premiere
THE PREDATORS [I PREDATORI]
Available December 10, 2020 at 9:00 AM - December 20, 2020 at 11:45 PM
Italy, 2020, color, 109 min. In Italian with English subtitles.
Please note: this title is available to viewers located anywhere in the United States and U.S. Territories.
Actor-turned-director Pietro Castellitto's (TWICE BORN) darkly hilarious feature debut, in which he also stars, explores — and pokes delicious fun at — the various absurd dramas of two very different Rome-based families: the working-class Vismaras, a family with fascist leanings and connections to the local mafia; and the bourgeoisie Pavones, a family of privileged and disconnected intellectuals who are absorbed by petty rivalries. When a couple of incidents set their disparate worlds on a path to collision, a series of unfortunate and grotesque events ensue, involving the unstable young intellectual Federico Pavone (Castellitto), his arrogant doctor father Pierpaolo (Massimo Popolizio, IL DIVO, THE GREAT BEAUTY) and self-absorbed director mother Ludovica (Manuela Mandracchia, SWEET DREAMS, WE HAVE A POPE), plus cocky gun shop employee Claudio Vismara (Giorgio Montanini, PARTLY CLOUDY WITH SUNNY SPELLS), his oafish brother Carlo (Claudio Camilli, THE END?) and their overbearing uncle Flavio (Antonio Gerardi, TUTTO QUELLO CHE VUOI). Castellitto's relentlessly entertaining, fresh and fast-paced black comedy confirms that we are all predators in one way or another.
BUY TICKET
DARKNESS [BUIO]
Available December 11, 2020 at 9:00 AM - December 20, 2020 at 11:45 PM
Italy, 2019, color, 96 min. In Italian with English subtitles.
Please note: this title is available to viewers located anywhere in the United States and U.S. Territories
Three sisters, eldest Stella (Denise Tantucci, soon to be seen in a new film from Nanni Moretti), tween Luce (Gaia Bocci) and youngster Aria (Olimpia Tosatto), live in a rambling, decrepit, boarded-up mansion with their domineering father (Valerio Binsasco). According to him, an apocalyptic event caused the sun to explode, killing most of the world's population, and only strong men like himself have any hope of survival outside — it's no place for a woman. While he ventures out each day to fetch food and supplies, the girls pass the time with games, old VHS videos and trying to remember the time when their mother was still alive. But after Aria wanders outdoors one day without incurring any injury, and after their father fails to return from his latest sojourn, the girls dare to venture outside to see the world for themselves. Filmmaker Emanuela Rossi dedicates her visionary science-fiction allegory "to all the girls who resist."
BUY TICKET
