Fellini Satyricon

Better late than never, perpetual NYFF bridesmaid Federico Fellini makes his very first festival appearance with this new restoration of his outrageous 1969 classic. In adapting the fragmented novel Satyricon by 1st Century AD author Petronius, Fellini sought, in his own words, “to eliminate the borderline between dream and imagination: to invent everything and then to objectify the fantasy; to get some distance from it in order to explore it as something all of a piece and unknowable.” The result is a phantasmagoric odyssey through ancient Rome, following the misadventures of the student Encolpio and his on-again, off-again boy lover Gitone as they face imprisonment on a pirate ship, kidnap a hermaphrodite demi-god, fight a minotaur, and search for a cure for Encolpio’s impotence. And that’s not even the half of it! Earning Fellini the third of his four Best Director Oscar nominations, Fellini Satyricon has been restored to its original visual splendor under the supervision of legendary cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno. A restoration by the Cineteca Nazionale, with the contribution of Dolce & Gabbana, presented by Ka Studio and Edoardo Ponti.