festivals

Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2021

Tickets are now on sale ! Now playing nationwide through June 6.

Open Roads: New Italian Cinema is the leading screening series to offer US audiences a diverse and extensive lineup of contemporary Italian films. This year’s 20th edition again strikes a balance between emerging talents and esteemed veterans, commercial and independent fare, outrageous comedies, gripping dramas, and captivating documentaries.

Open Roads: New Italian Cinema will go on sale on Monday, May 17 at noon, with an early access period for FLC members starting Friday, May 14. Individual rentals are $12 and a discounted Open Roads All-Access Pass is available for just $80 ($132 value). FLC members save an additional 20% on individual rentals and the festival pass. To access membership benefits for Open Roads, please click here.

Open Roads: New Italian Cinema is co-presented by Film at Lincoln Center and Istituto Luce Cinecittà. Organized by Dan Sullivan, Film at Lincoln Center; and by Carla Cattani, Griselda Guerrasio, and Monique Catalino, Istituto Luce Cinecittà.

All films are in Italian with English subtitles unless otherwise noted.

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Assandira

Salvatore Mereu
2020
126 minutes
Italian, Sardinian, English, and German with English subtitles

Salvatore Mereu’s latest chronicle of life in Sardinia fragmentarily retraces the winding chain of events that lead to a tragic fire at an agriturismo.

Bad Tales

Damiano & Fabio D'Innocenzo
2020
Italy/Switzerland
98 minutes
Italian with English Subtitles

The second feature by the D’Innocenzo brothers is an absorbing, richly traced group portrait of youth on the precipice of puberty, set in the suburbs of Rome.

For Lucio

Pietro Marcello
2021
79 minutes
Italian

Pietro Marcello returns to documentary with his latest, a reverent and intoxicating portrait of the late Bolognese singer Lucio Dalla, chronicling his rise to prominence in the 1960s and ’70s as well as Italy’s broader social transformations.

Hidden Away

Giorgio Diritti
2020
120 minutes
Italian

Elio Germano turns in a tour-de-force performance as Naïve painter Antonio Ligabue in Giorgio Diritti’s melancholic and forceful biopic.

The Mafia Is No Longer What It Used to Be

Franco Maresco
2019
105 minutes
Italian

The provocative and complex latest from Franco Maresco is an investigation on the streets of Palermo into the legacies of two anti-Mafia judges assassinated in the early 1990s.

Padrenostro

Claudio Noce
2020
122 minutes
Italian

Loosely based on a real-life assassination attempt against his father, Claudio Noce’s latest is a coming-of-age tale cast against the backdrop of Italy’s politically tumultuous Years of Lead.

The Predators

Pietro Castellitto
2020
109 minutes
Italian

Pietro Castellitto’s black comedy takes aim at class antagonism in contemporary Italy, buoyed by an inspired ensemble cast and ravishingly lensed by Carlo Rinaldi.

Una Promessa

Gianluca & Massimiliano De Serio
2020
Italy/France/Belgium
104 minutes

The De Serio brothers draw from their documentary background in their fictional latest, a low-key humanist drama about a laborer endeavoring to raise his wife from the dead to keep a promise to his son.

Punta Sacra

Francesca Mazzoleni
2020
Italy
96 minutes
Italian

Francesca Mazzoleni’s lyrical documentary traces a multifaceted portrait of Ostia, a small port village south of Rome, threatened by encroaching real estate development.

Sirley

Elisa Amoruso
2020
Italy
94 minutes
Italian

Documentarian Elisa Amoruso’s semi-autobiographical fiction debut chronicles a young girl’s stormy adolescence as she enters into a friendship with another student that will change her life.

The Ties

Daniele Luchetti
2020
Italy
100 minutes
Italian

Daniele Luchetti’s latest, opening with Alba Rohrwacher and Luigi Lo Cascio as a married couple in Naples in the 1980s, spans time and space, presenting fragments of a family’s history to arrive at a seductively complex group portrait.

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Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2021

Tickets are now on sale! Now playing nationwide through June 6. Open Roads: New Italian Cinema is the leading screening series to offer US audiences a diverse and extensive lineup of contemporary Italian films. This year’s… Read More

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