The ostensibly simple story of a sympathetic veteran teacher giving Italian lessons to a weekly class of diverse immigrants is given infinitely more depth and complexity by the manner in which director Daniele Gaglianone renders his story. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and artifice, and between documentary and drama, Gaglianone has created a film within a film. You see the apparent artifice of Gaglianone’s crew using professionals, including the noted film actor Valerio Mastandrea as the teacher, interlinked with ‘real’ immigrant protagonists, studying the language to improve their chances of employment and of gaining a permanent residence permit. Thus in the course of the lessons there is simultaneously the painful and upsetting relation of the students’ personal stories but also humour, as they interact and share their humanity, bridging cultural differences, united in their striving to make a better life for themselves. (Source: LFF programme)
You May Also Like
The film follows a group of friends and their highs and lows in pursuit of romantic redemption. It takes place over three years and is divided into eight parties : New Year’s Eve, one housewarming, Midsummer, a wedding, a surprise party, a name of celebration, anniversary and birthday parties. The friends are all late thirties or early forties. They fought all with their own idea of what the perfect love really is, and must re-evaluate their perception in the course of history.
Finding Neverland is an amusing drama about how the story of Peter Pan and Neverland came to be. During a writing slump play writer J.M. Barrie meets the widowed Sylvia and her three children who soon become an important part of Barrie’s life and the inspiration that lead him to create his masterpiece “Peter Pan.”
Meet leaders, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens working to eradicate ‘energy poverty’ in their countries. In a journey that’s enlightening and emotional, Switch On will change the way you look at energy and the developing world forever.
A boy named George Jung grows up in a struggling family in the 1950’s. His mother nags at her husband as he is trying to make a living for the family. It is finally revealed that George’s father cannot make a living and the family goes bankrupt. George does not want the same thing to happen to him, and his friend Tuna, in the 1960’s, suggests that he deal marijuana. He is a big hit in California in the 1960’s, yet he goes to jail, where he finds out about the wonders of cocaine. As a result, when released, he gets rich by bringing cocaine to America. However, he soon pays the price.
A blind man has an operation to regain his sight at the urging of his girlfriend and must deal with the changes to his life.
A relentless documentary filmmaker struggles to unravel the mystery of his uncle’s death as an unknown adversary threatens to destroy the project and his family.
This 1960 thriller, set in London, stars Doris Day as a wife who begins to unravel when she receives threatening telephone calls informing her she’s soon to be murdered.
Falsely accused for cheating in a martial arts competition, two boyhood friends are banished from their Shaolin Temple and go their separate ways. As adults, they join opposing sides in a civil war. When one betrays the other, they settle their differences mano-a-mano.
A narcissistic plastic surgeon, who prefers women of a certain high quality, but meets an every day woman who questions his morals, his methods and his meaning to life.
The New Wave of French horror cinema has arrived and at its vanguard is 14 year-old director Nathan Ambrosioni. Meredith Langston always longed to have children. She finally makes this happen when she adopts two young adolescent girls. However, her now idyllic world sours rapidly and dream veers to nightmare when she quickly finds that she is unable to cope with their increasingly strange behaviour. Desperate, she seeks the help of two journalists working for a local TV programme ‘SOS Adoption’. Unfortunately it is all for nothing, especially when the reporters discover that there is another presence in the house.