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Matteo Garrone’s refugee drama Io Capitano, an Oscar nominee this year for Italy in the best international feature category, was the big winner of this year’s 2024 David Di Donatello Awards, Italy’s equivalent to the Oscars, winning best film and director for Garrone.

Io Capitano also picked up prizes for best cinematography, editing, sound, and visual effects.

Paola Cortellesi’s There’s Still Tomorrow, a black-and-white feminist dramedy that became the top-grossing film in Italy last year, won Cortellesi the Donatello honors for best actress, directorial debut, and original script for the screenplay she co-wrote with Furio Andreotti and Giulia Calenda.

“I want to thank those who gave me the opportunity to write this role as I wanted it,” she said, accepting her actress honor.

Cortellesi’s film, a dramedy about an abused woman in post-wwii Rome that manages to combine serious social drama with situational comedy, sight gags and even a musical number,...

Matteo Garrone’s Oscar-nominated drama Io Capitano triumphed in Italy’s David di Donatello film awards on Friday evening, winning best film and best director.

The film about the trials and tribulations of two Senegalese teenagers as they try to make it to Europe via the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean Sea, also won best producer for companies Archimede, Rai cinema, Pathé and Tarantula as well as best sound, special effects, cinematography and editing.

Io Capitano premiered at the Venice Film Festival last September, where it won best director for Garrone and the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor for Seydou Sarr.

The movie went on to enjoy a buzzy awards season, securing a Golden Globe nomination for best non-English language film and an Academy Award nomination for best international film.

“This film tells the stories of those who are not listened to,” said Garrone, on receiving the best director award.

Netflix has dropped a teaser trailer for “Supersex,” the series freely inspired by the real life of global porn star Rocco Siffredi, which will world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival and drop March 6 on the streamer.

“Every power is an enigma. It can give you light, or throw you into darkness. But every existence lived to its fullest always has a price to pay,” a voiceover says in the teaser as Siffredi is bombarded by fans and paparazzi.

The show looks at how “Rocco Tano — a simple guy from Ortona [a small town in central Italy] — became Rocco Siffredi, the most famous pornstar in the world,” according to its official synopsis.

The hotly anticipated series is created and written by prominent Italian screenwriter Francesca Manieri, who is known for her feminist works.

At the center of “Supersex” – which is produced by Lorenzo Mieli’s The Apartment, a Fremantle company, and Groenlandia, which is part of...

Netflix has set a March 6 premiere date for “Supersex,” the series freely inspired by the real life of global porn star Rocco Siffredi, who has more than 1,500 hardcore films to his name.

The series is created and written by prominent Italian screenwriter Francesca Manieri who is known to be a militant feminist. It is described in promotional materials as a profound story that runs through Siffredi’s life since childhood and looks at his family, “his relationship with love” and how “Rocco Tano — a simple guy from Ortona [a small town in central Italy] — became Rocco Siffredi, the most famous pornstar in the world.”

“Supersex” directors are Matteo Rovere (“Romulus”), Francesco Carrozzini (“The Hanging Sun”) and Francesca Mazzoleni (“Punta Sacra”).

At the center of “Supersex” – which is being produced by Lorenzo Mieli’s The Apartment, a Fremantle company, and Groenlandia, which is part of the Banijay group – are unknown aspects of the Italian porn star, who...

Italy has submitted Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano as its candidate for Best International Film at the 96th Academy Awards.

The timely drama follows the hardships of two Senegalese teenagers as they try to make it to Europe via the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean Sea.

The film world premiered to critical acclaim in Competition in Venice winning Best Director for Garrone, Best Young Star for co-star Seydou Sarr and Best Production Director for Claudia Cravotta.

The Deadline review out of Venice describes the film as “a blisteringly topical drama” that could be Garrone’s “best” film to date, in a filmography that also includes Gomorrah, Tale of Tales and Dogman.

The selection was made by a committee overseen by Italian cinema organisation Anica. Its members comprised Alessandro Araimo, Domizia De Rosa, Esmeralda Calabria, Daniela Ciancio, Francesca Lo Schiavo, Giorgio Moroder, Cristiana Paternò, Michele Placido, Paola Randi, Riccardo Tozzi and Gianpiero Tulelli.

In Italy, Pierfrancesco Favino needs no introduction. At this year’s David di Donatello awards ceremony — Italy’s equivalent of the Oscars — a Favino film was nominated in every major category. A shortlist of the directors he’s worked with — Gabriele Salvatores, Giuseppe Tornatore, Marco Bellocchio, Gianni Amelio, Gabriele Muccino, Ferzan Ozpetek, Mario Martone — reads like a who’s who of Italian cinema.

Internationally, Favino has carved out a second career as a supporting player in Hollywood productions. In Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna, Ron Howard’s Rush and Angels and Demons, or Mark Forster’s World War Z. But his most recent U.S. visit — to this year’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York — was for an Italian film: Andrea Di Stefano’s Last Night of Amore, which screened in competition.

In the gritty police drama, Favino plays the titular Franco Amore, a good cop called...

Crime thrillers, if done well, always leave the audience with something to ponder upon. Usually showing the affairs between the good cops and the bad guys, this genre is known to flirt with lofty philosophical questions about honesty and righteousness versus survival and safety, which continue to run at the back of the mind even after the film ends. Writer-Director Andrea Di Stefano’s latest film, Last Night of Amore, only goes to show that he knows how to craft a thinking man’s crime thriller, while never missing out on the exciting elements associated with the genre.

Last Night of Amore is about an honest cop, Franco Amore, who hesitantly decides to work for a Chinese businessman as a security provider just days before his retirement. On his very last day before retiring, his unblemished career comes under attack when an assignment goes horribly wrong.

Spoilers Ahead

Plot Synopsis:...

The Last Night Of Amore director Andrea Di Stefano on Pierfrancesco Favino: “I wrote it thinking of him. I had his face in my mind.”

The retirement party for police lieutenant Franco Amore (Pierfrancesco Favino of Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor and Francesca Archibugi’s The Hummingbird) is in full swing, only the one person celebrated is nowhere to be seen in Andrea Di Stefano’s thriller The Last Night Of Amore. He arrives late, in jogging pants, having been out running through the nightly streets of Milan. Almost immediately after his arrival, he is called in to work because his partner Dino (Francesco Di Leva of Mario Martone’s Nostalgia with Favino) has been shot. Nothing is what it seems, we soon are about to find out, when the film jumps ten days back in time.

Andrea Di Stefano with Anne-Katrin Titze: “I’m trying to put together...

Italian actor-turned-director Andrea Di Stefano, whose sleek cop thriller “Last Night of Amore” just had its U.S. premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, is in advanced stages of development on “Karski” a feature about Jan Karski, the World War II Polish resistance fighter who risked his life to blow the whistle on the Holocaust.

Di Stefano’s high-profile project, which is titled “Karski,” is being developed by New York City-based production company Phiphen Pictures, the indie founded by Molly Conners most recently behind Netflix’s “Like Father” and “It’s Bruno!,” the director said. Italy’s expanding Indiana Production, which shepherded “Amore,” is also on board.

Karski in 1942, defying great danger, twice infiltrated Warsaw’s Jewish Ghetto to witness its horrors and managed to give first-hand accounts of the Holocaust from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Allies, including U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943. But his alarm cries fell on deaf ears.

Tribeca Film Festival Artistic Director Frédéric Boyer on Pierfrancesco Favino, star of Andrea Di Stefano’s The Last Night with Amore: “He’s an extraordinary actor.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

The Opening Night Gala selection of the 22nd edition of the Tribeca Film Festival is Nenad Cicin-Sain’s terrific documentary Kiss the Future, which includes on-camera interviews with U2 members Bono, The Edge, and Adam Clayton, plus Bill Clinton, Christiane Amanpour, Enes Zlatar (Sikter), Srdan Gino Jevdev (Kulture Shock), Vesna Andree Zaimović (journalist), and Senad Zaimović (editor-in-chief of the Rat Art).

Frédéric Boyer with Anne-Katrin Titze on Pier-Philippe Chevigny’s Richelieu: “This is about workers, the actors are extraordinary in the film.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

In the second instalment with Artistic Director Frédéric Boyer on the 2023 selections we discuss Robert De Niro’s A Bronx Tale (Closing Night Gala selection) Andrea Di Stefano’s (the priest in Ang Lee’s Life Of Pi...

Italian actor-turned-director Andrea Di Stefano, whose gritty police drama “The Last Night of Amore” is launching from the Berlin Film Festival’s Berlinale Special Gala section, reps an Italian anomaly.

“Amore,” which refers to a police lieutenant named Franco Amore, oddly marks Di Stefano debut directing an Italian-language film after helming well-received U.S. indie thrillers “Escobar: Paradise Lost,” with Benicio del Toro, and “The Informer.”

Sumptuosly shot in 35mm film and set in present-day Milan, “Last Night of Amore” harks back to Italian genre films of the 70s and 80s but has a fresh contemporary feel. The plot sees the good lieutenant, played by Italian A-lister Pierfrancesco Favino being called on the night before retirement to investigate a crime scene where his best friend and long-time partner Dino has been killed during a diamond heist. Complications ensue, things get very frantic, and we learn how his love for his wife Viviana,...

Festival to also honour French cinematographer Caroline Champetier with honorary Berlinale Camera.

The Berlinale has added the world premiere of documentary Love To Love You, Donna Summer and a tribute to a century of Disney animation to its upcoming 73rd edition.

The additions complete the lineup for the Berlinale Special sidebar at the festival, set to run February 16-26.

Love To Love You, Donna Summer is co-directed by Roger Ross Williams, Oscar nominated in 2016 for Life, Animated, and US actress Brooklyn Sudano, who is the daughter of Summer and makes her directorial debut with the film.

The documentary will explore...