Journeys to Italy
“The language of Ovid and Virgil, of Dante and Leopardi had passed into the images”: this is how Godard explained the greatness of Italian cinema. From Visconti to Rohrwacher, from Sicily to Piedmont, this series journeys through one of world cinema’s most influential currents. A cinema of truth and dream, of sun and ruins, where the intimate is forever entwined with History. It is also our way of paying tribute to the Casa d’Italia, to the neighbouring Little Italy and to Montreal’s Italian community. In that spirit, Voyages en Italie welcomes with open arms the work of filmmakers from the diaspora.
Journeys to Italy
8½
One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini’s 8½ marks the moment when the director’s always-personal approach fully embraced self-reflexivity, turning one man’s artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema.
Federico Fellini
Italy
language: Italian
subtitles: English
138 min
Journeys to Italy
A Chiara
For Chiara’s sister’s 18th birthday, a big party brings together the whole family. The next day, Claudio, her father, leaves without a trace, and Chiara investigates his disappearance. As she gets closer to the truth, her own destiny takes shape.
Jonas Carpignano
Italia, France
language: Italian
subtitles: English
121 min
Journeys to Italy
Allegro non troppo
An enterprising producer believes he has hit upon a winning concept: a program of original animated shorts set to classical music. He rallies an orchestra of geriatric women, a bullish conductor, and an animator that he keeps locked in the dungeon. What could go wrong?
Bruno Bozzetto
Italy
language: Italian
subtitles: English
85 min
The Milieu Trilogy
Caliber 9
Released from prison, Ugo tries to convince the police, the mafia, and his one-time associate Rocco, a sadistic hoodlum who enjoys sick violence and torture, that he wants to go straight, but everyone believes he has $300,000 of stolen money hidden somewhere.
Fernando Di Leo
Italy
language: Italian, English
subtitles: English
88 min
Journeys to Italy
Deep Red
With this movie, Argento perfected the classy, ultra-violent sub-genre that would come to be known as giallo and also perfected playing his audiences like a fiddle.
Dario Argento
Italy
language: Italian, English
subtitles: French
126 min
Journeys to Italy
Futura
In their travels across Italy, three filmmakers hear from a diverse range of young people, resulting in a snapshot of a generation for whom hope is always marred with uncertainty.
Pietro Marcello, Alice Rohrwacher, Francesco Munzi
Italy
language: Italian
subtitles: English
107 min
Journeys to Italy
Interdit aux chiens et aux italiens
Life in Ughettera, northern Italy, having become very difficult, the Ughetto family dream of starting over abroad. According to legend, Luigi Ughetto crossed the Alps and began a new life in France, changing forever the destiny of his beloved family.
Alain Ughetto
France, Italy, Switzerland
language: French, Italian
subtitles: English
70 min
Journeys to Italy
Le Décaméron
A handful of Giovanni Boccaccio’s fourteenth-century moral tales into this picturesque melee. One of Pasolini’s most popular films, The Decameron, transposed from Boccaccio’s Florence to Naples, is a scathing critique of the pietisms surrounding religion and sex.
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Italia, France, Germany
language: Italian, German
subtitles: French
110 min
Journeys to Italy
Le guépard
In Sicily, Tancredi, nephew of the Prince of Salina, falls for Angelica, daughter of the mayor Calogero Sedara — one of those bourgeois said to be wealthier than the Prince himself. Prince Salina will consent to the marriage as a sign of “the changing times.”
Luchino Visconti
Italie
language: Italian
subtitles: French
185 min
Journeys to Italy
Le Meraviglie
A family of beekeepers living in the Umbrian countryside finds their household disrupted by the simultaneous arrival of a silently troubled teenage boy and a reality TV show intent on showcasing the family.
Alice Rohrwacher
Italy
language: Italian
subtitles: English or French
112 min
Journeys to Italy
Les Contes de Canterbury
From the story of a nobleman struck blind after marrying a much younger and promiscuous bride to a climactic trip to a hell populated by friars and demons, this is an endlessly imaginative work of merry blasphemy.
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Italy, France
language: English, Italian, Latin, Scottish Gaelic
subtitles: French
111 min
Journeys to Italy
Les Mille et une nuits
In a market, the young Nourredine is attracted by the young slave Zoumourrhoud. Against the young man’s expectations, the beautiful girl offers herself to him and introduces him to the pleasures of the flesh. But a man captures Zoumourrhoud to make her his slave.
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Italia, France
language: Italian, Arabic
subtitles: French
130 min
Journeys to Italy
Mort à Venise
A fastidious composer reeling from a disastrous concert travels to Venice to recover. There, he is struck by a vision of pure beauty in the form of a young boy named Tadzio, his infatuation developing into an obsession even as rumors of a plague spread through the city.
Luchino Visconti
Italy
language: English
subtitles: French
131 min
Journeys to Italy
Pinocchio
Geppetto (Roberto Benigni), an old woodcarver, receives a piece of wood perfect for his next project: a puppet. But something magical happens – the cheeky puppet begins to talk, and can walk, run and eat like any young boy.
Matteo Garrone
Italy, France, United Kingdom
language: Italian
subtitles: French or English
125 min
Journeys to Italy
Selfie
How do you make a film about life in a poor neighborhood of Naples as an outsider? Director Agostino Ferrente came up with an idea as simple as it is brilliant: he gave teenagers in the district of Traiano a phone to film their lives in whatever way they liked.
Agostino Ferrente
France, Italy
language: Neapolitan, Italian
subtitles: French
76 min
Journeys to Italy
The Boss
The ruthless killer Lanzetta enters a small cinema during the screening of a porn movie and massacres with grenade launchers the gang of the boss Antonino Attardi. It will cause a sequence of twists and turns. Third and last part of Fernando Di Leo’s Milieu Trilogy.
Fernando Di Leo
Italy
language: Italian, English
subtitles: English
100 min
Journeys to Italy
The Godfather
Francis Ford Coppola’s Academy Award-winning masterpiece is set in the 1940’s and opens at the lavish wedding of Connie, the daughter of the revered Godfather — Don Corleone, an event where business and pleasure naturally go hand in hand.
Francis Ford Coppola
United States
language: English
subtitles: French
175 min
Journeys to Italy
The Italian Connection
When a shipment of heroin disappears, a small-time pimp is framed for the theft. Two professional hitmen are dispatched to rub him out, while the real thieves are rushing to kill him first.
Fernando Di Leo
Italy, West Germany
language: Italian, English
subtitles: English
88 min
Journeys to Italy
Vermiglio
This singular portrait of a sprawling family, set in the small, mountainous village of Vermiglio during the waning days of WWII, follows a series of dramatic, consequential events after the arrival of a taciturn Sicilian soldier, who hides out in town after deserting the army.
Maura Delpero
Italy, France
language: Italian
subtitles: French
119 min
