Fandango goes to AFM 2019

THE PREDATORS

I PREDATORI

Directed by Pietro Castellitto

Starring Massimo Popolizio, Manuela Mandracchia, Pietro Castellitto

Comedy, Italy. 2020

This is the story of two households that are complete opposites: the Pavone and Vismara families. One bourgeois and intellectual and the other proletarian and Fascist, these apparently contrary family units share the same jungle: Rome. A trivial accident will bring these two poles together. And the madness of a 25-year-old youth will set them on a collision course, discovering the cards to reveal that everyone has a secret and no one is what he or she seems to be – and that we are all predators



Clips available

Available World excluding Italy

MARKET SCREENING 

THE MAN WITHOUT GRAVITY

L’UOMO SENZA GRAVITÀ

Directed by Marco Bonfanti

Starring Elio Germano, Silvia D’Amico, Michela Cescon, Elena Cotta

Drama, Italy/Belgium 2019, 107'

A stormy night. A suburban hospital. A delivery room . In the act of coming into the world, a child named Oscar flew away, floating lighter than a balloon. Maybe it was a miracle, or maybe a trick of nature. But whatever it was the mother and the grandmother ran away, keeping him hidden from the eyes of the world for many years. They are good people, people from another era, to their eyes it’s too dangerous for others to know. But the “marvel” can’t be kept hidden after all these years and It decides to reveal itself. Upsetting one of the few objective certainties of human knowledge: gravity, that Oscar doesn’t possess. The “wonder” creates quite a stir and curiosity amongst peers, media, scientific community all over the world. Everyone wants to see him, to meet him, to greet him, to interview him, to exploit him and study him. Oscar became an international star, but lives it like a punishment, he only wants to be like everyone else: normal. Nothing more than normal. So he runs, looking for a woman’s love and companionship. The only one woman who ever cared for him. The only one who can make him understand the exceptional nature of his gift.



Available all rights for Japan, Russia And China

FAITH

Directed by Valentina Pedicini

Documentary, Italy. 2019, 93'

A community of Shaolin monks of the Catholic religion, who have chosen to follow the dream of their Master. A film to investigate the floe of “Time” in a closed dimension, a documentary to approach the deep motivations of a radical choice, and try to understand the reasons that have moved them away from their affections for the sake of a higher war. A poetic and emotional journey for the protagonists and for those who will film inside an unknown world, simply defined by the chronicle as “psycho-sect”, but what has been seen and experienced inside will show the dangers and convictions of those who fight in the name of faith.



Available World

MAFIA IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE

LA MAFIA NON È PIÙ QUELLA DI UNA VOLTA

Directed by Franco Maresco

Starring Letizia Battaglia, Ciccio Mira, Matteo Mannino, Cristian Miscel, Franco Zecchin

Documentary, Italy. 2019, 105'

In 2017, 25 years after the Mafia’s massacres at Capaci and Via D’Amelio, Franco Maresco decides to make a new film. The idea is given impetus by a work at that time completed recently, and dedicated to the photographer Letizia Battaglia, defined by The New York Times in 2017 as one of the “eleven women” who have left their mark on our time. He feels the need to combine Letizia, in parallel, with a figure as strong as it is peripheral, from the other side of the fence: Ciccio Mira, the leading character in 2014’s Belluscone. Una storia siciliana. The “legendary” organizer of popular street festivals, capable of inspiring a particular “empathy” in spite of his nostalgic ideas of the Mafia as it used to be, Mira has changed over these few years, and now he seems to seek redemption, as a man and as a manager. But the leopard cannot change its spots. He takes “care” of a new pupil, the young Cristian Miscel, often subject to psychotic episodes, especially when his mother and his impresario cannot guarantee his time on stage; and wants to organize a unique event at Zen, “I neolomelodici per Falcone e Borsellino” (The neolomelodics for Falcone and Borsellino), on the occasion of the celebrations commemorating the two martyrs killed by the Mafia...



Available World excluding Italy, Portugal, Germany, Greece

BELLISSIME

Directed by Elisa Amoruso

Documentary, Italy. 2019

Four extraordinarily emblematic experiences will make it possible to investigate what the passage of fame, of the spotlight, of visibility multiplied by magazines, advertising, and commercials can mean in a child’s life. A single family nucleus, united and protected by beauty worship. Little women, extremely well-maintained, regulars at the gyms and the beauty salon, in search of an opportunity, a chance to shine again – and their mother who, more than they, and perhaps more tenaciously, takes great pains to massage these possibilities, proudly claiming “I raised them really well.” Their days. We follow each member of this blonde quartet, with their private trajectories and shared objectives: entering Accademia della Moda for Giò, the new Miss Mascotte selections for Francesca, Valentina’s auditions for Il Collegio, and their mother Cristina’s departure for Ibiza. An open reflection on beauty, on the worship of appearance, on what it means to be a girl, a teenager, a mother, in a continuous play of references between past and present.



Available World excluding Italy

ONE MORE JUMP

Directed by Emanuele Gerosa

Starring The Gaza Parkour Team

Documentary, Italy/Switzerland/Lebanon, 2019, 82'

When Abdallah – founder of the Gaza Parkour Team – was invited to Europe, a few years ago, he decided not to make return to Gaza, with the aim of becoming a professional athlete. His friend and teammate Jehad still lives segregated in the Strip. Every day he trains the youngest members of the team: only sport can keep their hopes alive… he too dreams of leaving Palestine. But Jehad is aware that, fleeing alone, Abdallah has made things even worse for them. One day Abdallah decides that the time has come to join the main European parkour competition in Sweden, and to confront reality. In the same days Jehad finally receives the visa he has been waiting years for… Can you ever be free if you must leave everything you love behind?



Available world excluding Switzerland and mena countries

CETTO IS BACK DOUBTLESSLY

CETTO C’È - SENZADUBBIAMENTE

Directed by Giulio Manfredonia

Starring Antonio Albanese, Nicola Rignanese, Caterina Shulha, Gianfelice Imparato, Davide Giordano, Lorenza Indovina

Comedy, Italy, 2019

Ten years following his election as mayor of Marina di Sopra, Cetto la Qualunque has disappeared without a trace. We discover that he is living in Germany, and that today, having set aside all political ambition, Cetto la Qualunque is considered by the Germans to be nothing more than an irresistible and picturesque entrepreneur. He considers Germany to be a land of conquest, and the Mafia a seal of quality. His chain of restaurants and pizzerias is in fact bustling; he has a beautiful German girlfriend and two neo-Nazi in-laws that view him with the sympathy normally reserved for migrants. However, the call of his homeland is still strong, and news of the worsening condition of the beloved aunt who raised him leads him to return to the land of crime and pleasure. In Italy, his aunt will reveal something to him from his past and his birth, which will forever change the course of his life and, “unfortunably,” all of our lives as well. Cetto is back in power, and this time the consequences might be imponderable.



Available world excluding Italy

Italian release 21 november 2019 vision distribution 500 screens

ONLY THE LIVING CAN DIE

SI MUORE SOLO DA VIVI

Directed by Alberto Rizzi

Starring Alessandro Roja, Alessandra Mastronardi, Neri Marcoré, Amanda Lear, Francesco Pannofino, Ugo Pagliai

Comedy, Italy, 2020, 94’

Orlando is a solitary man, lazy and on his way to give up. He lives day-to-day on the banks of the Po river, until the 2012 earthquake forces him to take his life back into his own hands, to take care of his niece, to deal with an old love and, above all, to bring his old band back. He ends up rediscovering the beauty of doing things together. A story told amid the dance halls known as “balere,” poplar forests, and life along the shores of the great river which, with its undulating banks, assembles, pulls apart, and brings with it the wisdom of a culture that, despite its modernity, never forgets its identity. A colourful and light-hearted comedy, brought alive by music, landscapes, love, and a desire to get back in the game.



Available World

PARADISE

Directed by Davide Del Degan

Starring Vincenzo Nemolato, Giovanni Calcagno, Katarina Cas

Comedy, Italy/Slovenia 2019, 83’

Calogero is in the witness protection program after having witnessed a mafia murder in Sicily. With a new identity, he is sent as far as possible: Sauris, a tiny village nestled in the Italian Alps. But snow and weird Schuhplattler folk dances do not fit him. However, he is not the only one who started a new life here; in fact, the killer that he had reported was caught and is now an informer, under the very same protection program, and for a miscarriage of justice he ended up in Sauris too. Calogero believes he’s there to kill him, but misunderstandings lead to friendship and even more... feelings have their own ways. Calogero hides from the mafia and the Killer hides from his past. Sometimes differences perfectly match.



Available world excluding Argentina, Chile, Italy, Paraguay, Uruguay

ALMOST CHRISTMAS

QUASI NATALE

Directed by Francesco Lagi

Starring Silvia D’Amico, Anna Bellato, Francesco Colella, Leonardo Maddalena

Comedy, Italy 2019

Three siblings meet after a long time in their family house few days before Christmas because their mother wants to tell them one more thing before she dies. A young woman joins them by chance, she’s a stranger but looks strangely familiar. Old spirits have been trapped in that house and in the siblings’ hearts for a too long time



Available world.

THE KINGDOM

IL REGNO

Directed by Francesco Fanuele

Starring Stefano Fresi, Max Tortora, Fotini Peluso, Silvia D'Amico, Enzo Salomone

Comedy, Italy, 2019

A city bus driver discovers that his father who abandoned him thirty years earlier has, at the moment of his death, left him an inheritance: the throne of a near-Medieval kingdom. After finding himself leading – and endangering – this secret community, the bus driver will fight the Italian state to save it and win its independence. In so doing, he finally sheds his inferiority complex towards his father figure, and at long last heals the wounds of his abandonment.



Promo available

BANGLA

Directed by Phaim Bhuiyan

Starring Phaim Bhuiyan, Carlotta Antonelli, Shaila Mohiuddin, Nasima Akhter, Rishad Noorani, Fabian Durrani, Raja Sethi, Ahammed Miah, Sanija Shoshi Haque, Simone Liberati, Pietro Sermonti

Comedy, Italy, 2019

Phaim, a young Moslem of Bangladeshi origin born in Italy 22 years ago, lives with his family in Rome’s multiethnic Torpignattara neighbourhood, works as a museum steward, and plays in a band. At a concert, he meets Asia, his exact opposite: pure instinct, and no rules. The attraction between them is immediate, and Phaim will have to figure out how to reconcile his love for the young woman with the most inviolable of Islam’s rules: no sex before marriage.

 

THE GREAT SPIRIT

IL GRANDE SPIRITO

Directed by Sergio Rubini

Starring Sergio Rubini, Rocco Papaleo, Bianca Guaccero, Ivana Lotito

Drama, Italy, 2018

In a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Taranto, during a robbery, one of the three accomplices, Tonino aka Barboncino, a shabby-looking fifty-year old, takes advantage of the other two men’s distraction, grabs the whole loot, and runs off. Tonino , runs from rooftop to rooftop until he reaches the uppermost terrace, beyond which there is a precipice that forces him to take refuge in an old washhouse. Someone surprisingly helps him hide successfully. This strange individual wears a bird’s feather behind his ear: he says he’s called Black Deer and belongs to the Sioux tribe.

Tonino, soon realizes he is under siege: the neighbourhood is manned by his pursuers, and the street corners are monitored. In these days of forced immobility, as his impracticable attempts to recover the loot and organize an escape with his ex- companion Milena fail, Tonino comes to the bitter conclusion that he is all alone. He has only one desperate alternative left: to join forces with this eccentric man who acts like an Indian and who, precisely because he looks at the world from another perspective, might perhaps provide him with the key out of the dead end where he has ended up.

TWIN FLOWER

FIORE GEMELLO

Directed by Laura Luchetti

Starring Aniello Arena, Anastasiya Bogach, Giorgio Colangeli, Kallil Kone

Drama, Italy, 2018, 95’

"Twin Flower" is the dark tale of two teens abused and damaged by life, who together, try to regain their lost innocence. Sixteen year old Anna is on the run, escaping from a violent event that traumatized her. Because of what has happened to her she has lost her voice. On the road she is rescued by Basim, a sixteen year old illegal immigrant from Ivory Coast. Together they embark on a perilous journey through the deserted lands, woods, villages and breathtaking landscapes of Sardinia. Anna is pursued by Manfredi, the immigrant’s trafficker her father used to work for. Manfredi has always been obsessed by Anna, by her strength, her innocence, her beauty. When Anna runs away from him the man’s fury is unleashed into a pursuit like that of a wild beast on the trail of its prey. Anna and Basim only have each other in the world. Their love becomes their strength. Their odyssey will reach its climax in a desperate act of extreme violence that will finally set them free and leaving them ready to walk together towards their future.



Available world excluding Switzerland

THE FIRST STONE

LA PRIMA PIETRA

Directed by Rolando Ravello

Starring Corrado Guzzanti, Lucia Mascino, Kasia Smutniak, Serra Yilmaz, Valerio Aprea, Iaia Forte, Caterina Bertone, Lorenzo Ciamei, Gabriele Paolucci

Comedy, Italy, 2019

On the eve of the Christmas festivities, the Montessori school is abuzz with excitement as the elementary students rehearse for the traditional show. Because of the poor funding, the show appears not to have met the expectations of the headmaster, who has a maniacal interest in this event. A school window is shattered by a stone thrown by Farouk Hatab, a boy of Middle Eastern origin. Summoned by the school, the boy’s mother, accompanied by her mother-in-law, arrives to discuss how the events unfolded, as well as possible compensation for the damage done. In a single room, then, is a group of absolutely heterogeneous and incompatible people, pointing their fingers at one another: Ms. Hatab, Farouk’s mother, in never-ending conflict with her intolerant mother-in-law; two injured janitors, who first seek reconciliation but quickly turn aggressive; the teacher, Ms. Roversi, a naïve character who turns out to be less tolerant than expected; and the Headmaster, concerned only with the success of his Christmas pageant. The discussion over the thrown stone transcends the school’s boundaries and becomes a heated confrontation over the issue of racism and prejudice. The clash becomes physical, spreading among the other...the Christmas show finally begins, restoring peace in people’s souls ... Maybe.

BASED ON A PLAY BY STEFANO MASSINI

THE ARMADILLO’S PROPHECY

LA PROFEZIA DELL’ARMADILLO

Directed by Emanuele Scaringi

Starring Simone Liberati, Pietro Castellitto, Laura Morante, Valerio Aprea, Claudia Pandolfi, Teco Celio, Diana Del Bufalo

Comedy, Italy, 2018, 103’

The Armadillo’s Prophecy is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Zerocalcare. It tells the story of ZERO, a twenty-seven year old guy who lives in a peripheral Roman suburb of Rebibbia, Tiburtina Valley, a small paradise squeezed between Tburtina and Nomentana. Mammuth Land, shell suits, imprisoned bodies and big hearts. Nothing’s there but nothing’s needed. ZERO is an illustrator, though not having a stable income, he copes by tutoring French, timing how long people queue for at the airport and doing illustrations for independent punk bands. His life is very repetitive, days spent on public transport traveling across Rome to get to his various jobs, going to see his MOTHER and coming back home, to find his critical conscience in the form of an ARMADILLO, in flesh and blood, or rather, plates and soft tissue, with whom he has conversations bordering on paradoxical during which he updates him on what’s happening in the world. Keeping him afloat in this hard-knocks life is his childhood friend SECCO. Upon hearing the news of CAMILLE’s death, a french girl he never had the chance to confess his love to, him and SECCO look for GRETA: a friend they haven’t seen in ages with whom they plan to share the tragic news to then go together to CAMILLE’s funeral in France. The loss makes ZERO reflect on his life up until now and confront his irreverent spirit about the incommunicability, doubts and uncertainties regarding his generation of outcasts.

WHEREVER YOU ARE

OVUNQUE PROTEGGIMI

Directed by Bonifacio Angius

Starring Alessandro Gazale, Francesca Niedda

Drama, Italy, 2018, 98’

Alessandro wears his shiny lucky shirt, he feels stunning. He doesn’t feel his fifty years. After singing for an ungrateful audience, like every saturday night, he starts his day at Blu Star Disco. When in the morning his mother refuses to lend him some money to impress two young girls, Alessandro loses his mind. After a life wasted on a slot machine, already drunk early in the morning, hoping for the luck of a scratch card, he would never have imagined that love could find him. In an hospital. It's here, that he meets Francesca. Big green eyes, melancholy and bright, spontaneous as a child and two ship tickets in her pocket. For her and the son Antonio, five years old with a melting heart face (a face that would warm your heart).

In August, Sardinia is an explosion of white light, red-hot cement, golden countryside, sea that sparkles in the distance. Alessandro and Francesca are finally out of the hospital, on their way to a last chance.



From the director of “Perfidia” Locarno IFF 2014 - Competition - Junior Jury Award