The Wonders (Alice Rohrwacher)
Italy
•
1h 51m
Directed by Alice Rohrwacher • Drama • With Alba Rohrwacher, Maria Alexandra Lungu, Monica Bellucci • 2014 • 111 minutes
The Wonders is an enchanting drama centered around a family of beekeepers who are struggling to make ends meet on their farm nestled deep in the Italian countryside. While the seemingly bucolic landscape and lifestyle harkens back to another era (the film itself is evocative of such European classics as Victor Erice’sSpirit of the Beehiveand Fellini’sNights of Cabiria),the story takes place very much in the present, something which comes into sharp focus when a reality TV show (featuring a host played by Monica Bellucci) arrives in town intent on showcasing the family. At once beautiful, intimate, and completely transporting, Rohrwacher’s second feature (her first,Corpo Celeste, premiered in Cannes in 2011) followed up its Cannes win by playing such prestigious showcases as the New York Film Festival, the London Film Festival, AFI Fest, and International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Up Next in Italy
-
The Resolute
Directed by Giovanni Donfrancesco • Documentary • 2017 • 159 minutes
An 87-year-old Italian who has retired to the woods of Vermont meets a filmmaker and seizes the occasion to look back on his long life. Wartime memories long suppressed trigger recollections of his inconvenient past as a child ...
-
Excellent Cadavers
Directed by Marco Turco • Documentary • 2006 • 92 minutes
Based on the book by Italian-American author Alexander Stille and featuring the photos of Sicilian photojournalist Letizia Battaglia, EXCELLENT CADAVERS chronicles the recent history of the Mafia and its integral—and seemingly ineradicabl...
-
Battaglia
Directed by Daniela Zanzotto • Documentary • 2002 • 58 minutes
At almost 40 years old, Sicilian photographer Letizia Battaglia decided that being a mother and wife, the thing that she was meant to do according to the society she lived in, just wasn’t enough anymore. With great inner strength, sh...
