Q&A with Francesco Patierno on June 1

Valentina Cortese starred in films by such masters as Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, and François Truffaut (she was nominated for an Oscar for her turn as an over-the-hill, hard-drinking thespian in the latter’s Day for Night). In this inventive work of cinematic biography, eight actresses play Cortese at various stages of her career, amidst a kaleidoscopic wealth of film clips and archival footage. In a work that is by turns glamorous, celebratory, and soberly confessional, “Cortese” often addresses the viewer directly, yielding a direct and engaging portrait of an actress whose offscreen complexity often exceeded the roles she memorably incarnated.