Synopsis

Sicily. Early 2000s. After serving several years in prison for Mafia-related crimes, Catello (Toni Servillo), a long-serving politician, has lost everything. When the Italian secret service prevails upon him to help capture the last major Sicilian Mafia boss Matteo (Elio Germano), who has been on the lam for three decades, Catello sees an opportunity to stage a comeback. A shrewd man of a hundred masks, Catello is a tireless illusionist and master manipulator, who turns truth into falsehood and falsehood into truth. As unique as it is improbable, Catello begins a correspondence with Matteo – using handwritten letters passed discretely to the fugitive with the intention of exploiting the younger man’s emotional shortcomings. It’s a gamble, one which, with one of the most wanted criminals in the world, involves a high degree of risk. Directing duo Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza (Salvo, Sicilian Ghost Story) return to the Festival with this mesmerizing addition to their wholly distinctive examination of the impact of Mafia culture on Sicilian civil society.

Synopsis

1917. Edward, a skittish civil servant working for the British Empire, has been posted in Rangoon, Burma for years. When his fiancée Molly sends a letter announcing her imminent arrival, he experiences a sudden and debilitating case of cold feet, boards the first ship in sight, and flees the country. Learning of his escape, Molly is determined to track him down. So she embarks on an Asian grand tour, going from Bangkok to Shanghai in search of her reluctant lover. Equal parts 1930s Hollywood throwback and meditative travelog, director Miguel Gomes (The Tsugua Diaries, Chicago IFF 2020) imbues this globe-trotting love story with searching melancholy. The studio-set “colonial romance” is shot in black and white, and intercut with sumptuous color footage shot in the modern day. The result is an intoxicating mixture of fiction and documentary that ponders the past as it ruminates on our present.

Synopsis

A panoramic portrait of a patriarchal society, Happy Holidays chronicles the lives of a Palestinian family living in Israel. While studying far away from her home in Haifa, Fifi’s newfound sense of freedom is threatened when she gets into a minor car accident. Injured, but hoping to avoid confrontation with her headstrong mother, she must decide just how much to reveal to her family. Her decision creates a cascade of ripple effects, and a complex web of deceits and half-truths begins to crack the family’s foundations.

Told in four chapters, each from the perspective of a different character, the film intricately balances a bevy of narrative threads to create a swirling, kaleidoscopic drama. Featuring pitch-perfect performances and a shifting structure that subverts expectations at every turn, the film elaborates the clashing demands of tradition and progress.

Synopsis

From Oscar-nominated director Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence) comes a poignant and deeply human musical about a family that survived the end of the world. Twenty-five years after environmental collapse left the Earth uninhabitable, Mother (Tilda Swinton), Father (Michael Shannon) and Son (George McKay) are confined to their palatial bunker, where they struggle to maintain hope and a sense of normalcy by clinging to the rituals of daily life — until the arrival of a stranger, Girl, upends their happy routine.

As tensions rise, their seemingly idyllic existence starts to crumble, with long-repressed feelings of remorse and resentment threatening to destroy the family’s delicate balance. But their reckoning with difficult truths also points to a different way forward, one based on acceptance, love, and a capacity for change. An urgent and unforgettable cautionary tale.

Synopsis

Sicily, 1900. Modesta is born into a life of poverty, but, rebellious by nature, she believes that she is destined for a better life. Moving from her childhood home deep in the mountains to an imposing convent for wealthy young women and eventually to a decadent aristocratic estate, she rises up in the world. Using her wit, assertiveness, and guile, she emerges as a fearless and emancipated bisexual character, willing to stand up to all systems of domination.

Through sumptuous photography, beautifully crafted costumes, and impressive direction, The Art of Joy assiduously builds Modesta’s world – interior and exterior – absorbing us wholly into her perspective and life experience. Director Valeria Golino creates a stunningly relevant adaptation of Goliarda Sapienza’s subversive novel, which was deemed too outrageous to be published when it was completed in the 1970s.

Two-part film with intermission and Q&A