Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà present the 22nd edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema, running from June 1 to 8.

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

The opening-night screening is Francesca Archibugi’s latest feature The Hummingbird, adapted from Sandro Veronesi’s Strega Prize-winning novel, an at once epic and intimate chronicle of love and familial ups and downs that spans six decades and three generations, featuring Pierfrancesco Favino, Berenice Bejo, Laura Morante, Nanni Moretti, and others.

Additional offerings for this year’s edition include but are not limited to: Gianni Amelio’s masterfully executed Lord of the Ants, a deeply stirring biopic of the poet/playwright Aldo Braibanti; Roberto Andò’s 12th feature Strangeness, which stars Toni Servillo as Nobel Prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello, who, on a trip to his native Sicily in 1920, encounters a pair of gravediggers/aspiring actors and unexpectedly arrives at the idea for what will ultimately become his signature work; actress Monica Dugo’s directorial feature Like Turtles, a tragicomic chronicle of a family’s dissolution about a woman who, her husband having abruptly left her and their children behind, climbs into her wardrobe and refuses to come out; Michele Vannucci’s second feature Delta, set on the Po Delta in northern Italy, where tensions are rising among the small community that calls it home, especially between a lifelong native fisherman (Alessandro Borghi) and a wildlife warden (Luigi Lo Cascio); Paolo Virzi’s Dry, a wryly satirical ensemble drama (with a top-notch cast including Silvio Orlando, Valerio Mastandrea, Monica Bellucci, and others) about the vanity of humans in the face of global catastrophe during an imagined three-year drought; and Giuseppe Fiorello’s debut feature Fireworks, based on a true story set in Sicily in 1982, which turns a budding romance between two teenage boys into a moving examination of the painful moments that produce political change.

This year’s presentation includes a focus on Mario Martone, one of the key Italian filmmakers of the past 40 years, who has completed 17 features since his 1992 theatrical feature debut Death of a Neapolitan Mathematician. Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà pay homage to Martone (a perennial presence in the Open Roads lineup) by showcasing his most recent fiction film, Nostalgia, alongside two essential works from earlier in his career: 1995’s Troubling Love (co-written with Elena Ferrante) and 2014’s Leopardi.

Open Roads is co-presented by Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà in collaboration with Italian Cultural institute – NYC and the support of Casa Italian Zeerilli Marimò – NYU.

In celebration of this year’s edition of Open Roads, the streaming service Film Movement Plus is putting a spotlight on their Italian cinema collection, including films recently seen at Open Roads, and offering an exclusive 50% OFF discount on your Film Movement Plus annual subscription, visit here.

We’re excited to introduce a dinner and a movie combo with our Italian programming this June, including this festival. For $30, receive one ticket to a film in Open Roads: New Italian Cinema and a select menu item at Café Paradiso, located in FLC’s Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center. Learn more here.