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Italy

THE MISSING STAR
(LA STELLA CHE NON C’È)
2006, Gianni Amelio, Italy, 103 min.
With Sergio Castellitto, Tai Ling

Amelio, one of Italy’s greatest contemporary directors (STOLEN CHILDREN, LAMERICA), once again explores questions of conscience within a quest narrative. While attempting to prevent the sale of a defective blast furnace to a Chinese factory, a conscientious Italian engineer (Castellitto) inadvertently causes the translator (Ling) to be fired. He journeys to China to repair both the machine and the relationship, taking him on a consciousness-expanding odyssey that leads from booming Shanghai past the Three Gorges Dam to the overcrowded tenements of Baotou. In Italian and Mandarin with English subtitles. 35mm print courtesy of Lakeshore Entertainment. (MR)

Saturday, March 29, 5:00 pm
Monday, March 31, 6:00 pm

MY BEST ENEMY
(IL MIO MIGLIOR NEMICO)
2006, Carlo Verdone, Italy, 110 min.
With Carlo Verdone, Silvio Muccino

Two of the leads of last year’s EU Film Festival hit MANUAL OF LOVE--veteran Verdone and rising star Muccino--team up in a character-rich farce that, like many fine comedies, has serious themes at its base. When a hotel maid is fired for suspected theft, her indignant son (Muccino) goes on a no-blow-too-low rampage to ruin the life of the pompous manager (Verdone) who was responsible. But the perils of self-righteousness are amply illustrated as both men get comeuppances they never expected. In Italian with English subtitles. 35mm print courtesy of JOMASACO. (MR)

Saturday, March 22, 3:00 pm
Thursday, March 27, 6:00 pm

SATURN IN OPPOSITION
(SATURNO CONTRO)
2007, Ferzan Ozpetek, Italy, 110 min.
With Stefano Accorsi, Margherita Buy

Ozpetek (FACING WINDOWS, IGNORANT FAIRIES) displays his gifts for fluid camerawork and depicting alternative sexualities in this graceful ensemble drama about a circle of friends--gay and straight, married and single--orbiting around a successful gay novelist (Pierfrancesco Favino). The film’s unconventional use of voiceover narration frames a calamity that causes the group to reexamine their relationships and to confront eternal questions of time and change. In Italian with English subtitles. 35mm print courtesy of Strand Releasing. (MR)

Sunday, March 16, 5:00 pm
Thursday, March 20, 8:00 pm

THE UNKNOWN WOMAN
(LA SCONOSCIUTA)
2006, Giuseppe Tornatore, Italy, 118 min.
With Kseniya Rappoport, Michele Placido

THE UNKNOWN WOMAN is Tornatore’s first film since MALENA in 2000, and it has been hailed as a return to form for the director of CINEMA PARADISO. Italy’s official Oscar submission for Best Foreign Film, it swept the Donatello awards last year, winning Best Film, Actress, Director, Cinematography, and Music (Ennio Morricone). Tornatore’s characteristic social and emotional concerns are reinvigorated in a thriller format with overtones of giallo and Hitchcock, as a Ukrainian woman with a mysterious, sordid past insinuates herself into the household of a couple with a young daughter. In Italian with English subtitles. Preview courtesy of Outsider Pictures. 35mm widescreen. (MR)

Sunday, March 30, 3:00 pm
Tuesday, April 1, 7:45 pm

THE WEDDING DIRECTOR
(IL REGISTA DI MATRIMONI)
2006, Marco Bellocchio, Italy, 100 min.
With Sergio Castellitto, Sami Frey

“Full of brio and cinematic mastery, Bellocchio is having fun, and I did, too.”--Phillip Lopate, Film Comment

The cinema and the church are the establishments that the always iconoclastic Bellocchio (MY MOTHER’S SMILE; FISTS IN THE POCKET) targets in this semi-surreal satire, chock-full of movie in-jokes, that several critics have called his 8½. His career on the rocks, a film director (Castellitto of MOSTLY MARTHA) is reduced to filming the wedding of a Sicilian princess (Donatella Finocchiaro)--and falls in love with the bride. In Italian with English subtitles. Preview courtesy of New Yorker Films. 35mm. (MR)

Saturday, March 8, 5:00 pm
Monday, March 10, 7:45 pm

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