Open Roads. The Best of Italian Cinema in New York

Now at its ninth edition, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema has become one of the tent poles of the Walter Reade Theater calendar.  The past year has been especially rewarding, with the great international success of Silvio Soldini (Days and Clouds), Matteo Garrone (Gomorrah), and Paolo Sorrentino (Il Divo), all veterans of Film Society programs. In addition, Ferzan Ozpetek, an Open Roads regular with four films premiered here, received a wonderful mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art and returns to Open Roads this year with A Perfect Day.


This year’s Open Roads adds a number of exciting new debut directors to this list. Marco Amenta offers a remarkable portrait of courage in The Sicilian Girl, while screenwriters turned directors Dino and Filippo Gentili present a genre-bending comedy/noir/thriller, I Am Alive. Among the returning Open Roads veterans are Edoardo Winspeare (Brave Men), Daniele Vicari (The Past is a Foreign Land), Mimmo Calopresti (The Germans’ Factory), and Gabriele Salvatores (As God Commands). Veteran director Pupi Avati offers his finest film in years, Giovanna’s Father, and, as a very special feature of this year's Open Roads slate, Italian rock star Jovanotti will introduce a tribute to the great Italian singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André, whose death from cancer in 1999 robbed the world of a great artist much too soon.

Many of the directors and other special guests are aspected to attend the series including: Marco Amenta (director, The Sicilian Girl), Donatella Finocchiaro (actress, Brave Men), Silvio Orlando (actor, Giovanna’s Father), Dino Gentili (director, I Am Alive), Maria Sole Tognazzi (director, The Man Who Loves), Filippo Timi (actor, As God Commands), Ursula Ferrara (director, Animated Passions), Teresa Marchesi (director, Effedia), and Sandra Petraglia (writer, A Perfect Day).

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From Lincon Center and  Walter Reade Theater website