Few but good: there are only two Italian titles chosen at Cannes

(from Cannes Luigi Noera and Maria Vittoria Battaglia with the kind collaboration of Vittorio De Agrò (RS) – the photos are published courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival)

This is how we can summarize the presence of Italian Cinema in this 77th edition of the Festival par excellence.

In fact, there are two Italians who will represent us on the Croisette in a few weeks. We had hoped until the end that a new Italian talent would be discovered in the Quinzaine, or to the ACID section, But this did not happen. The massive presence of Americans and French was obvious and therefore we have to count on two pillars of cinema italiano. The first Oscar winner and already winner at Cannes who with his latest work selected in the Cannes Competition reminds us of Fellini's amarcord. Since Sorrentino wrote his screenplays without the contribution of Maestro Umberto Contarello, he has increasingly focused on his Neapolitan origins from which he borrows the title. The second director Minervino, again younger at least for his presence in the cinema scene, has an intense documentary career behind him, formed in secessionist America where he has lived for several decades and therefore with a burden on the last. Both are the prototype of our culture which we had to export abroad in different ways to emerge. We place so much trust in them for their previous work and the results obtained to date that Thierry Fremaux will have taken into account to endorse the choices of his selectors. Of course Sorrentino will have to contend with giants of cinema because the selection is truly remarkable such as Francis Ford COPPOLA, David CRONENBERG, JIA Zhang-Ke, Yórgos LÁNTHIMOS, Kirill SEREBRENNIKOV (someone wrote that Cannes stole all the films from Venice!), but he has the imagination that distinguishes him, while Minervini has the ability to enclose the new trends in 90 minutes. On the one hand, his poetic style can be compared to the Filipino Master Lav Diaz, from which he differs due to the natural conciseness of his films which immediately get to the heart of the matter.

With these premises we hope that justice will be done for the previous edition's failure to recognize Alice Rohrwacher's remarkable film The Chimera which is now receiving well-deserved acclaim in theaters overseas.

Then all we have to say is: Long live Italian Cinema!

We would like to remind you that among other titles Italy, albeit indirectly, she is mentioned in the docu fiction MARCELLO MIO by the French director Christophe HONORÉ with the presence of Chiara Mastroianni in the cast (patroness of the Festival last year) and mother Catherine Deneuve who talks about Marcello Mastroianni, a recurring Italian icon on the Croisette who right in 2014 (67but edition) it was on full display on the official poster.

Ed: In total the titles proposed in the main competition and UCR and FC are 55, while in the collateral sections QZ, SdC and Acid are 42 beyond the Cannes Classics and La Plage and since at the time of publication the selected shorts have not yet been announced, we still hope!

Thanks in advance go to the RdC staff for their commitment.

luigi Noera