The Italian film festival N.I.C.E. – New Italian Cinema Events – has reached its 21st year and opened in Moscow once again: nine movies and four documentaries will be shown until April 8 in three different locations: the Oktyabr and Atrium cinemas and, for the second year in row, the Tretyakov Gallery.
“The fact that the festival has gone on for 21 years underlines the partnership between Italy and Russia in this field but also in culture in general,” Walter Ferrara, cultural promotion’ manager at the Italian Embassy in Moscow, told The Moscow Times. “The aim of this festival is to bring the contemporary Italian cinema to Russia and share it with the Russian audience,” he said.
Like in previous years, N.I.C.E., a collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of Moscow, features various genres, including a thriller, comedies, historical movies and documentaries. Festival director Viviana Del Bianco said that after watching “innumerable movies before the final selection, we preferred the comedies and the young film makers.” Unlike in the past festivals, the 21st is not screening old Italian movies but showcasing new films made by contemporaries directors, a sign that the Italian cinema is investing in new talent.
Many of the filmmakers will be in the Russian capital to show their movies and talk with the audience about their films and the status of Italian cinema. The selection of documentaries brings to Moscow “Offline,” a short by Emanuela Mascherini released in 2016 about the meeting of two guys through a social network. The story touches the current topic of virtual connections and the parallel world hiding online.
This year the festival is also hosting Annarita Zambrano and her film “After the War,” a drama that recalls the protest against the new Labor Law that exploded in the Italian universities at the beginning of the 2000s. The movie has been presented at the 2017 Cannes Festival and it is Zambrano’s debut full-length feature film.
Another special guest, Daniele Di Stefano, is not only the director of “I Will Protect You,” scheduled to be shown on April 8, but also the movie’s scriptwriter and protagonist. The thriller, set in Florence, tells the story of a mysterious killer who has raped and killed a child.
The Film Festival is held at the same time at Saint Petersburg’s Rodina Cinema and then will move on to Novosibirsk and other Russian cities.
For more information about the films and schedule, see the cinema site.
