The romantic drama is Ozeptek’s first film since 2019’s ‘The Fortune Goddess’.
Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek has started shooting the romantic drama Nuovo Olimpo in Rome today for Netflix. Damiano Gavino and Andrea Di Luigi star with Luisa Ranieri, Greta Scarano, Aurora Giovinazzo, Alvise Rigo, and Giancarlo Commare.
Ozeptek has written the script with regularr collaborator Gianni Romoli who is also producing the film with Tilde Corsi for R&c Productions and Faros Film.
Nuovo Olimpo follows the lives of two young men who meet and fell in love in the 1970s as idealistic, young 25 year-olds . After a twist of events separates them,...
Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek has started shooting the romantic drama Nuovo Olimpo in Rome today for Netflix. Damiano Gavino and Andrea Di Luigi star with Luisa Ranieri, Greta Scarano, Aurora Giovinazzo, Alvise Rigo, and Giancarlo Commare.
Ozeptek has written the script with regularr collaborator Gianni Romoli who is also producing the film with Tilde Corsi for R&c Productions and Faros Film.
Nuovo Olimpo follows the lives of two young men who meet and fell in love in the 1970s as idealistic, young 25 year-olds . After a twist of events separates them,...
- 11/14/2022
- by Alina Trabattoni
- ScreenDaily
Prolific Turkish-Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek has started shooting “Nuovo Olimpo,” a Rome-set gay romance that marks his first collaboration with Netflix.
Ozpetek’s first Netflix Italian original film is the fourteenth feature from the popular helmer known for commercially successful pics such as “Ignorant Fairies” and “Loose Cannons.” He was celebrated during an AmfAR gala at the Venice Film Festival in September in recognition for how his movies bring to the fore characters within the LGBTQ community. Ozpetek’s works are also consistently among Italy’s most widely exported movies despite the fact they don’t always go to festivals.
Set in the late 1970s “Nuovo Olimpo” is about two 25-year-old men who meet by chance, fall madly in love, and are then separated due to an unexpected event. For the next thirty years they pursue the hope of finding each other again.
The pic’s protagonists are young actors...
Ozpetek’s first Netflix Italian original film is the fourteenth feature from the popular helmer known for commercially successful pics such as “Ignorant Fairies” and “Loose Cannons.” He was celebrated during an AmfAR gala at the Venice Film Festival in September in recognition for how his movies bring to the fore characters within the LGBTQ community. Ozpetek’s works are also consistently among Italy’s most widely exported movies despite the fact they don’t always go to festivals.
Set in the late 1970s “Nuovo Olimpo” is about two 25-year-old men who meet by chance, fall madly in love, and are then separated due to an unexpected event. For the next thirty years they pursue the hope of finding each other again.
The pic’s protagonists are young actors...
- 11/14/2022
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
The first clapperboard has slammed on the Star original romantic drama starring Cristiana Capotondi and Luca Argentero, based upon Ferzan Özpetek’s 2001 hit film. Cristiana Capotondi (recently seen in Attenti al gorilla and Woman’s Name), Eduardo Scarpetta (Capri-Revolution) and Luca Argentero (recently gracing Good Goals and the series Doc – Nelle tue mani) are leading the cast of the much-anticipated Star original series The Ignorant Angels, a work based upon the hit film which established Ferzan Özpetek in the industry in 2001, His Secret Life. Disney+ has released a photo of the first clapperboard for the romantic drama, which is composed of eight 50-minute episodes and is written by Özpetek, Gianni Romoli, Carlotta Corradi and Massimo Bacchini, with production in the hands of R&c Produzioni. The firm headed up by Tilde Corsi and Gianni Romoli has made almost all of Ozpetek’s films, including his most recent work The Goddess of.
Irish producer Mike Downey, who was recently elected as chairman of the board of the European Film Academy, has told Variety that he’d like to work more closely with other film academies, including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as well as continuing Efa’s work as a campaigner for persecuted filmmakers.
Downey, CEO of Film and Music Entertainment, had previously served as Efa’s deputy chairman, and takes the baton as chairman from Polish director Agnieszka Holland, who has been at the helm for the past six years.
He told Variety: “I’ve just returned from the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, run by our sister organization the Asia Pacific Screen Academy. We have much in common and support many of the same principles and goals. I’d like to reach out to our colleagues around the world, in Asia, the U.S. – and along with our...
Downey, CEO of Film and Music Entertainment, had previously served as Efa’s deputy chairman, and takes the baton as chairman from Polish director Agnieszka Holland, who has been at the helm for the past six years.
He told Variety: “I’ve just returned from the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, run by our sister organization the Asia Pacific Screen Academy. We have much in common and support many of the same principles and goals. I’d like to reach out to our colleagues around the world, in Asia, the U.S. – and along with our...
- 12/10/2019
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
It is written by Ozpetek with his longtime collaborator and producer Gianni Romoli and Silvia Ranfagni.
Italy’s True Colours has picked up international rights to Ferzan Ozpetek’s anticipated new feature The Fortune Goddess.
Stefano Accorsi, Jasmine Trinca and Edoardo Leo are set to star in the film about a gay couple who are thrown into crisis when a friend asks them to take care of her children for a couple of days.
The Italian-language film is being produced by Gianni Romoli and Tilde Corsi for R&C Production with Warner Bros Entertainment Italia. It is written by Ozpetek with...
Italy’s True Colours has picked up international rights to Ferzan Ozpetek’s anticipated new feature The Fortune Goddess.
Stefano Accorsi, Jasmine Trinca and Edoardo Leo are set to star in the film about a gay couple who are thrown into crisis when a friend asks them to take care of her children for a couple of days.
The Italian-language film is being produced by Gianni Romoli and Tilde Corsi for R&C Production with Warner Bros Entertainment Italia. It is written by Ozpetek with...
- 5/15/2019
- by Gabriele Niola
- ScreenDaily
Exclusive: Breaking Glass Pictures has acquired North American rights to the mystery thriller and noir feature Naples in Veils from writer/director Ferzan Ozpetek. The film will get a theatrical release in the first half of 2019 in English with Italian subtitles, followed by a DVD/VOD release.
The film held its world premiere at the Moscow Film Festival where it took home the Best Actress Prize for star Giovanna Mezzogiorno, and then played multiple festivals after that. It was scripted by Gianni Romoli, Balia Santella, and Ozpetek and produced by Tilde Corsi and Gianni Romoli with the collaboration of the Foundation Film Commission of the Region of Campania and the support of The Region of Lazio.
The storyline: A woman is at a party and meets a confident and attractive young man, and they spend the night together. Little does she know, however,...
The film held its world premiere at the Moscow Film Festival where it took home the Best Actress Prize for star Giovanna Mezzogiorno, and then played multiple festivals after that. It was scripted by Gianni Romoli, Balia Santella, and Ozpetek and produced by Tilde Corsi and Gianni Romoli with the collaboration of the Foundation Film Commission of the Region of Campania and the support of The Region of Lazio.
The storyline: A woman is at a party and meets a confident and attractive young man, and they spend the night together. Little does she know, however,...
- 12/19/2018
- by Anita Busch
- Deadline Film + TV
Exclusive: Sales for the film, which started shooting this month, will commence in Cannes.
True Colours has acquired the worldwide sales rights to Ferzan Ozpetek’s next project, Naples In Veils.
Ozpetek co-wrote the script with Gianni Romoli, who is producing with Tilde Corsi, Faros Film and Warner Bros Entertainment Italia.
Set in the titular city, the film revolves around a woman who is overwhelmed by a sudden love and a violent crime; Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Alessandro Borghi star.
It’s the second film in a row from the Turkish-born filmmaker dedicated to a city after previous feature Istanbul Red.
The film’s Naples-set shoot kicked off on May 13, with an Italian release date pencilled for early 2018. True Colours kicks off sales on the project here in Cannes.
The company has also acquired sales rights to previous Ozpetek films including Ignorant Fairies and Facing Widow.
Read more:
The latest Cannes news, reviews and features...
True Colours has acquired the worldwide sales rights to Ferzan Ozpetek’s next project, Naples In Veils.
Ozpetek co-wrote the script with Gianni Romoli, who is producing with Tilde Corsi, Faros Film and Warner Bros Entertainment Italia.
Set in the titular city, the film revolves around a woman who is overwhelmed by a sudden love and a violent crime; Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Alessandro Borghi star.
It’s the second film in a row from the Turkish-born filmmaker dedicated to a city after previous feature Istanbul Red.
The film’s Naples-set shoot kicked off on May 13, with an Italian release date pencilled for early 2018. True Colours kicks off sales on the project here in Cannes.
The company has also acquired sales rights to previous Ozpetek films including Ignorant Fairies and Facing Widow.
Read more:
The latest Cannes news, reviews and features...
- 5/19/2017
- ScreenDaily
Six women have been elected onto the board of the European Film Academy (Efa).
Each board member is elected for a two-year term, with eight of the board up for re-election this time. Re-elected were two female members, Dagmar Jacobsen and Rebecca O’Brien. The six new board members are:
Tilde Corsi, Italy, producerIra von Gienanth, Germany, producer/distributorAngeles Gonzáles-Sinde, Spain, screenwriterVanessa Henneman, Netherlands, talent agentAgnès Jaoui, France, director/screenwriter/actressEwa Puszczynska, Poland, producer
They replace Adriana Chiesa di Palma (Italy), Stephan Hutter (Germany), Cedomir Kolar (France), Goran Paskaljevic (Serbia), Antonio Perez Perez (Spain) and Jani Thiltges (Luxembourg).
Efa Board
Chairwoman:
Agnieszka Holland, Poland, director
Deputy Chairmen:
Mike Downey, UK, producer
Antonio Saura, Spain, producer
Board Members:
Roberto Cicutto, Italy, producer
Tilde Corsi, Italy, producer
Helena Danielsson, Sweden, producer
Ira von Gienanth, Germany, producer/distributor
Ilann Girard, France, producer
Angeles Gonzáles-Sinde, Spain, screenwriter
Vanessa Henneman, Netherlands, talent agent
Dagmar Jacobsen, Germany, producer...
Each board member is elected for a two-year term, with eight of the board up for re-election this time. Re-elected were two female members, Dagmar Jacobsen and Rebecca O’Brien. The six new board members are:
Tilde Corsi, Italy, producerIra von Gienanth, Germany, producer/distributorAngeles Gonzáles-Sinde, Spain, screenwriterVanessa Henneman, Netherlands, talent agentAgnès Jaoui, France, director/screenwriter/actressEwa Puszczynska, Poland, producer
They replace Adriana Chiesa di Palma (Italy), Stephan Hutter (Germany), Cedomir Kolar (France), Goran Paskaljevic (Serbia), Antonio Perez Perez (Spain) and Jani Thiltges (Luxembourg).
Efa Board
Chairwoman:
Agnieszka Holland, Poland, director
Deputy Chairmen:
Mike Downey, UK, producer
Antonio Saura, Spain, producer
Board Members:
Roberto Cicutto, Italy, producer
Tilde Corsi, Italy, producer
Helena Danielsson, Sweden, producer
Ira von Gienanth, Germany, producer/distributor
Ilann Girard, France, producer
Angeles Gonzáles-Sinde, Spain, screenwriter
Vanessa Henneman, Netherlands, talent agent
Dagmar Jacobsen, Germany, producer...
- 1/12/2015
- ScreenDaily
New European Audiovisual Observatory (Eao) study reveals just 16.1% of films released in Europe over the last ten years were by women.
Gender-based film quotas are the only way to boost the position of women in the film industry, said panellists at a European Audiovisual Observatory workshop in Cannes on Saturday.
The packed out workshop, entitled Girls Just Wanna Have Film! presented three studies looking at the position of women in the film industry.
The timely conference followed comments by Cannes Film Festival jury president Jane Campion [pictured] that there was ‘inherent sexism in the industry”.
New findings by the Eao, showed that female directors accounted for 16.1% of the 9,349 European films released in Europe from 2003 to 2012, which in turn accounted for 8.7% of the box office in that period.
A British Film Institute (BFI) study on female directors and screenwriters in the UK from 2010-2012 revealed that woman wrote 37% of the top independent films in that period and directed 18%.
The...
Gender-based film quotas are the only way to boost the position of women in the film industry, said panellists at a European Audiovisual Observatory workshop in Cannes on Saturday.
The packed out workshop, entitled Girls Just Wanna Have Film! presented three studies looking at the position of women in the film industry.
The timely conference followed comments by Cannes Film Festival jury president Jane Campion [pictured] that there was ‘inherent sexism in the industry”.
New findings by the Eao, showed that female directors accounted for 16.1% of the 9,349 European films released in Europe from 2003 to 2012, which in turn accounted for 8.7% of the box office in that period.
A British Film Institute (BFI) study on female directors and screenwriters in the UK from 2010-2012 revealed that woman wrote 37% of the top independent films in that period and directed 18%.
The...
- 5/18/2014
- ScreenDaily
Venice International Film Festival
R&C Prods.
VENICE, Italy -- Rush Hour is a strange English title for Vincenzio Marra's languid and unintentionally amusing drama about a corrupt member of Italy's Financial Police who thinks he can outwit his boss, major financiers, building unions and two beautiful women.
The only thing rushed about it is the screenplay, which stumbles into so many silly pitfalls that it provoked laughter at a press and industry screening at the Venice International Film Festival.
With leading man Michele Lastella providing handsome looks but only two expressions -- surprise and self-satisfaction -- the picture, which was in competition at the festival, is likely to sink without trace even on home territory.
The young police officer joins the financial department full of brisk energy and eager to suck up to Capt. Salvi, played by Augusto Zucchi as if he were a mafia don. Despite having a lovely and caring fiance (Giulia Bevilacqua), Costa succumbs to the charms of an older woman, a rich widow (Fanny Ardant).
After a successful career taking bribes left and right, which he shares with the captain, Costa quits the department and gets into the construction business, which he knows nothing about. Banal and predictable, the film's one element of interest is in guessing what cliche will come next.
RUSH HOUR
R&C Prods., The French Connection, RAI Cinema
Credits:
Director, writer: Vincenzio Marra
Producers: Tilde Corsi and Gianni Romoli
Director of photography: Luca Bigazzi
Production designer: Beatrice Scarpato
Costume Designer: Daniella Ciancio
Editor: Luca Benedetti
Cast:
Caterina: Fanny Ardant
Filippo: Michele Lastella
Francesca: Giulia Bevilacqua
Captain Salvi: Augusto Zucchi
Donati: Atonio Gerardi
Anna: Barba Valmorin
Patrizi: Nicola Labate
Prisco: Maurizio Tesei
Running time -- 95 minutes
No MPAA rating...
R&C Prods.
VENICE, Italy -- Rush Hour is a strange English title for Vincenzio Marra's languid and unintentionally amusing drama about a corrupt member of Italy's Financial Police who thinks he can outwit his boss, major financiers, building unions and two beautiful women.
The only thing rushed about it is the screenplay, which stumbles into so many silly pitfalls that it provoked laughter at a press and industry screening at the Venice International Film Festival.
With leading man Michele Lastella providing handsome looks but only two expressions -- surprise and self-satisfaction -- the picture, which was in competition at the festival, is likely to sink without trace even on home territory.
The young police officer joins the financial department full of brisk energy and eager to suck up to Capt. Salvi, played by Augusto Zucchi as if he were a mafia don. Despite having a lovely and caring fiance (Giulia Bevilacqua), Costa succumbs to the charms of an older woman, a rich widow (Fanny Ardant).
After a successful career taking bribes left and right, which he shares with the captain, Costa quits the department and gets into the construction business, which he knows nothing about. Banal and predictable, the film's one element of interest is in guessing what cliche will come next.
RUSH HOUR
R&C Prods., The French Connection, RAI Cinema
Credits:
Director, writer: Vincenzio Marra
Producers: Tilde Corsi and Gianni Romoli
Director of photography: Luca Bigazzi
Production designer: Beatrice Scarpato
Costume Designer: Daniella Ciancio
Editor: Luca Benedetti
Cast:
Caterina: Fanny Ardant
Filippo: Michele Lastella
Francesca: Giulia Bevilacqua
Captain Salvi: Augusto Zucchi
Donati: Atonio Gerardi
Anna: Barba Valmorin
Patrizi: Nicola Labate
Prisco: Maurizio Tesei
Running time -- 95 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/11/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- Brick Lane adds another shrewd, poignant film to a growing genre of immigrant stories. This one stems from Monica Ali's debut novel, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2003. Where her book follows the life of Nazneen, a Bangladeshi village girl who moves to London at age 17 for an arranged marriage to an older man, the film version chooses to focus on a single fateful year, 2001, to capture the essence of how Nazneen, now a mother of two daughters, finds her identity, her strength and her voice after years of self-sacrifice.
The film, directed by Sarah Gavron, who helmed a well-received BBC TV movie and here makes her feature debut, has genuine warmth in its portrayal of this woman and her family and wisdom in how it subtly makes its points without resorting to melodrama or forced conflict. While the film should find eager adult audiences in the U.K. and other territories with large South Asian populations, in the U.S., Sony Pictures Classics will need rely on the easy access the film allows into Nazneen's life, making the foreign familiar and family situations universal.
Flashes of Nazneen's idyllic childhood in Bangladesh, playing carefree with her beloved sister, run through the film, in sharp contrast to her East London home -- a grim, unlovely street named Brick Lane and a mean flat, hemmed in by too much furniture and her husband's unjustified yet boundless optimism.
The film has skipped over 13 years of her adjustment to British society and the loss of her first born, a son. She has made a peace of sorts with her destiny, cutting her husband's corns, raising her daughters and leaving the flat only to shop. Indian actress Tannishtha Chatterjee gives Nazneen a keen intelligence and inner frustration, both of which are well disguised. With little dialogue initially other than voiceovers, Chatterjee must signal Nazneen's discontent in her eyes and the occasional stoop of her body.
Satish Kaushik, a well-known comic actor and film director in India, is wonderfully cast as the husband, Chanu, a character of Dickensian richness. Chanu is pompous and kind, full of plans that never pan out and convinced of future success when all signs indicate otherwise. Chanu is a poor match for his lovely and lonely wife. He is overweight, too old and exasperating, yet completely unaware of any shortcomings.
Letters from her younger sister back home give Nazneen a kind of parallel life. For her sister rebelled against family and ran off for true love, rejecting an arranged marriage. Then everything changes for Nazneen when the passionate Karim (Christopher Simpson) enters her life.
Nazneen has acquired a sewing machine and Karim brings her work in the form of men's pants to stitch. He is much more assimilated into British culture, yet is angry at the racial intolerance and anti-Moslem sentiment rife in that society.
Hesitantly yet excitedly, Nazneen falls into an ardent affair with Karim. For a time, she and her sister no longer live such different lives. Can this love for Karim save her?
The tragedy of 9/11 hits this community especially hard and Chanu more than ever feels the pull of home. He makes plans to return his family to Bangladesh. But his daughters are confirmed Londoners, and his wife no longer feels that pull as she once did.
Brick Lane is beautifully acted and written (by Abi Morgan and Laura Jones) so its themes are touched upon glancingly rather than with full force. The journey of all three major characters, Nazneen, Chanu and Karim, happens with remarkable subtlety so you can accompany them, so you can feel the emotions and experience delicate mental shifts. Behind the camera, everyone has done his job so that here too you can experience an environment and sense how it acts upon character.
Just walk through a bookstore in this city on your way to the films of the '07 Toronto International Film Festival and you can't help but be aware that the themes of multicuturalism and immigration will continue to recur in literature and cinema. Brick Lane is one of the better examples of how these themes can be expressed through characters that strive for self-determination in an increasingly complex but vibrant world.
RUSH HOUR
R&C Prods., The French Connection, RAI Cinema
Credits:
Director, writer: Vincenzio Marra
Producers: Tilde Corsi and Gianni Romoli
Director of photography: Luca Bigazzi
Production designer: Beatrice Scarpato
Costume Designer: Daniella Ciancio
Editor: Luca Benedetti
Cast:
Caterina: Fanny Ardant
Filippo: Michele Lastella
Francesca: Giulia Bevilacqua
Captain Salvi: Augusto Zucchi
Donati: Atonio Gerardi
Anna: Barba Valmorin
Patrizi: Nicola Labate
Prisco: Maurizio Tesei
Running time -- 95 minutes
No MPAA rating...
TORONTO -- Brick Lane adds another shrewd, poignant film to a growing genre of immigrant stories. This one stems from Monica Ali's debut novel, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2003. Where her book follows the life of Nazneen, a Bangladeshi village girl who moves to London at age 17 for an arranged marriage to an older man, the film version chooses to focus on a single fateful year, 2001, to capture the essence of how Nazneen, now a mother of two daughters, finds her identity, her strength and her voice after years of self-sacrifice.
The film, directed by Sarah Gavron, who helmed a well-received BBC TV movie and here makes her feature debut, has genuine warmth in its portrayal of this woman and her family and wisdom in how it subtly makes its points without resorting to melodrama or forced conflict. While the film should find eager adult audiences in the U.K. and other territories with large South Asian populations, in the U.S., Sony Pictures Classics will need rely on the easy access the film allows into Nazneen's life, making the foreign familiar and family situations universal.
Flashes of Nazneen's idyllic childhood in Bangladesh, playing carefree with her beloved sister, run through the film, in sharp contrast to her East London home -- a grim, unlovely street named Brick Lane and a mean flat, hemmed in by too much furniture and her husband's unjustified yet boundless optimism.
The film has skipped over 13 years of her adjustment to British society and the loss of her first born, a son. She has made a peace of sorts with her destiny, cutting her husband's corns, raising her daughters and leaving the flat only to shop. Indian actress Tannishtha Chatterjee gives Nazneen a keen intelligence and inner frustration, both of which are well disguised. With little dialogue initially other than voiceovers, Chatterjee must signal Nazneen's discontent in her eyes and the occasional stoop of her body.
Satish Kaushik, a well-known comic actor and film director in India, is wonderfully cast as the husband, Chanu, a character of Dickensian richness. Chanu is pompous and kind, full of plans that never pan out and convinced of future success when all signs indicate otherwise. Chanu is a poor match for his lovely and lonely wife. He is overweight, too old and exasperating, yet completely unaware of any shortcomings.
Letters from her younger sister back home give Nazneen a kind of parallel life. For her sister rebelled against family and ran off for true love, rejecting an arranged marriage. Then everything changes for Nazneen when the passionate Karim (Christopher Simpson) enters her life.
Nazneen has acquired a sewing machine and Karim brings her work in the form of men's pants to stitch. He is much more assimilated into British culture, yet is angry at the racial intolerance and anti-Moslem sentiment rife in that society.
Hesitantly yet excitedly, Nazneen falls into an ardent affair with Karim. For a time, she and her sister no longer live such different lives. Can this love for Karim save her?
The tragedy of 9/11 hits this community especially hard and Chanu more than ever feels the pull of home. He makes plans to return his family to Bangladesh. But his daughters are confirmed Londoners, and his wife no longer feels that pull as she once did.
Brick Lane is beautifully acted and written (by Abi Morgan and Laura Jones) so its themes are touched upon glancingly rather than with full force. The journey of all three major characters, Nazneen, Chanu and Karim, happens with remarkable subtlety so you can accompany them, so you can feel the emotions and experience delicate mental shifts. Behind the camera, everyone has done his job so that here too you can experience an environment and sense how it acts upon character.
Just walk through a bookstore in this city on your way to the films of the '07 Toronto International Film Festival and you can't help but be aware that the themes of multicuturalism and immigration will continue to recur in literature and cinema. Brick Lane is one of the better examples of how these themes can be expressed through characters that strive for self-determination in an increasingly complex but vibrant world.
RUSH HOUR
R&C Prods., The French Connection, RAI Cinema
Credits:
Director, writer: Vincenzio Marra
Producers: Tilde Corsi and Gianni Romoli
Director of photography: Luca Bigazzi
Production designer: Beatrice Scarpato
Costume Designer: Daniella Ciancio
Editor: Luca Benedetti
Cast:
Caterina: Fanny Ardant
Filippo: Michele Lastella
Francesca: Giulia Bevilacqua
Captain Salvi: Augusto Zucchi
Donati: Atonio Gerardi
Anna: Barba Valmorin
Patrizi: Nicola Labate
Prisco: Maurizio Tesei
Running time -- 95 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/11/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- Individual questions of belonging and reconciliation resonate with contentious geopolitical ones in the new film by Amos Gitai, a story that prefers to draw connections obliquely and without rendering direct judgment. Challenging at times but ultimately affecting, it should find viewers receptive at the more rarefied end of the arthouse marketplace.
Juliette Binoche plays Ana, an odd bird whose jarring sense of humor -- weird vocal tics, overly sexual flirtation with her half-brother Uli -- may or may not be a temporary side-effect of grief. Her father is dead, lying in repose within the dilapidated luxury of an Avignon estate that (to judge from a nearly surreal one-off scene) appears to have a village of squatters lurking quietly in the basement.
Gitai dallies in this limbo, placing the recently reunited siblings in some meandering rebonding scenes before the postfuneral revelation: For years, Ana's father knew about the daughter she had in secret and abandoned on a kibbutz. His will requires Ana to go to the Gaza Strip and introduce herself to Dana, now a schoolteacher in an Israeli settlement.
Coincidentally, Uli's police unit has been tasked with disbanding those settlements, and the story's second half, more dramatically driven but still moving at its own pace, follows brother and sister on their separate missions into this emotionally and politically charged territory.
The characters transform when freed from their father's home, Ana becoming an accidental witness to history (Binoche looks more at home here, raw and apprehensively wide-eyed) and Uli a cautious participant in it, trying to avert disaster while doing his duty. The closer we get to the removal of settlers, the more Gitai's pacing choices make sense: extra moments spent along a line of police practicing crowd control here or the slow crawl through a temple full of desperate settlers there convey the gravity of the conflict better than dialogue would, and offer stronger emotional shading to the mother/daughter reunion taking place at the same time. Gitai doesn't reveal just where that relationship is going to go, any more than he predicts the next phase in Israel/Palestine relations; clearly, this moment of interaction is the important thing to witness.
A wryly sexy prologue to the film offers two strangers on a train, each a mixed bag of ethnic and political identities, sharing a cigarette despite a customs official's insulting suggestion that their countrymen wouldn't approve. There's no symbolism here, one replies, right before the Israeli and the Palestinian fall into a torrid embrace. The delivery of the line sounds like a facetious disclaimer on the filmmaker's part, daring viewers to make sense in dramatic terms of relationships that are still being negotiated in the real world.
DISENGAGEMENT
Studio Canal
Agav Films / Agat Films & CIE / Pandora Films / Hamon Hafakot/ R&C Produzioni / Intereurop / ARTE France
Credits:
Director: Amos Gitai
Writers: Amos Gitai, Marie-Jose Sanselme
Producer: Laurent Truchot
Executive Producers: Amos Gitai, Laurent Truchot
Director of photography: Christian Berger
Production designers: Emmanuel de Chauvigny, Tim Pannen, Eli Zion
Music: Simon Stockhausen
Co-producers: Tilde Corsi, Christoph Friedel, Patrick Sobelman, Claudia Steffen
Costume designer: Moira Douguet
Editor: Isabelle Ingold
Cast:
Ana: Juliette Binoche
Uli: Liron Levo
Dana: Dana Ivgy
Running time -- 117 minutes
No MPAA rating...
TORONTO -- Individual questions of belonging and reconciliation resonate with contentious geopolitical ones in the new film by Amos Gitai, a story that prefers to draw connections obliquely and without rendering direct judgment. Challenging at times but ultimately affecting, it should find viewers receptive at the more rarefied end of the arthouse marketplace.
Juliette Binoche plays Ana, an odd bird whose jarring sense of humor -- weird vocal tics, overly sexual flirtation with her half-brother Uli -- may or may not be a temporary side-effect of grief. Her father is dead, lying in repose within the dilapidated luxury of an Avignon estate that (to judge from a nearly surreal one-off scene) appears to have a village of squatters lurking quietly in the basement.
Gitai dallies in this limbo, placing the recently reunited siblings in some meandering rebonding scenes before the postfuneral revelation: For years, Ana's father knew about the daughter she had in secret and abandoned on a kibbutz. His will requires Ana to go to the Gaza Strip and introduce herself to Dana, now a schoolteacher in an Israeli settlement.
Coincidentally, Uli's police unit has been tasked with disbanding those settlements, and the story's second half, more dramatically driven but still moving at its own pace, follows brother and sister on their separate missions into this emotionally and politically charged territory.
The characters transform when freed from their father's home, Ana becoming an accidental witness to history (Binoche looks more at home here, raw and apprehensively wide-eyed) and Uli a cautious participant in it, trying to avert disaster while doing his duty. The closer we get to the removal of settlers, the more Gitai's pacing choices make sense: extra moments spent along a line of police practicing crowd control here or the slow crawl through a temple full of desperate settlers there convey the gravity of the conflict better than dialogue would, and offer stronger emotional shading to the mother/daughter reunion taking place at the same time. Gitai doesn't reveal just where that relationship is going to go, any more than he predicts the next phase in Israel/Palestine relations; clearly, this moment of interaction is the important thing to witness.
A wryly sexy prologue to the film offers two strangers on a train, each a mixed bag of ethnic and political identities, sharing a cigarette despite a customs official's insulting suggestion that their countrymen wouldn't approve. There's no symbolism here, one replies, right before the Israeli and the Palestinian fall into a torrid embrace. The delivery of the line sounds like a facetious disclaimer on the filmmaker's part, daring viewers to make sense in dramatic terms of relationships that are still being negotiated in the real world.
DISENGAGEMENT
Studio Canal
Agav Films / Agat Films & CIE / Pandora Films / Hamon Hafakot/ R&C Produzioni / Intereurop / ARTE France
Credits:
Director: Amos Gitai
Writers: Amos Gitai, Marie-Jose Sanselme
Producer: Laurent Truchot
Executive Producers: Amos Gitai, Laurent Truchot
Director of photography: Christian Berger
Production designers: Emmanuel de Chauvigny, Tim Pannen, Eli Zion
Music: Simon Stockhausen
Co-producers: Tilde Corsi, Christoph Friedel, Patrick Sobelman, Claudia Steffen
Costume designer: Moira Douguet
Editor: Isabelle Ingold
Cast:
Ana: Juliette Binoche
Uli: Liron Levo
Dana: Dana Ivgy
Running time -- 117 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/10/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
After his impressive debut, the 1997 "The Turkish Bath-Hammam", distributed this spring by Strand Releasing, Ferzan Ozpetek valiantly tries, but can't quite deliver a strong follow-up with "Harem Suare", the closing-night work of Un Certain Regard that, despite a strong cast, should encounter a great deal more resistance critically and commercially here.
A French, Italian and Turkish co-production, "Harem Suare" has its own virtues, in particular the silky, sensuous lead performance from Belgian actress Marie Gillain, but the work is fatally undone by the lack of cultural identification and concentration necessary to piece together the faltered storytelling. The frequent shifts among French, Italian and Turkish only intensify the confusion. Ozpetek wrote the script with Italian writer Gianni Romoli. The leaps in time, the apparent flash forward of the two principal women, now in their mid-50s, recalling their involvement in a harem at the turn of the century, achieves the opposite effect. Instead of demystifying the experience and making it vivid, it only romanticizes the past.
Gillain, so memorable in Bertrand Tavernier's "Fresh Bait", plays Safiye, an impoverished Italian woman purchased in a Cairo slave market and presented, as a "gift," to Sultan Abdulhamit II (Haluck Bilginer) in 1907, at the twilight of the Ottoman Empire. Drawing on a combination of her sexual power and intelligence (she translates the operas for the Sultan, a fanatic of the art), Safiye quickly insinuates herself into the Sultan's elite inner circle, the most desired of his concubines. Through the elite training and watchful eye of Nadir (Alex Descas), a eunuch, Safiye quickly consolidates her power, eliminating her rivals, dispatching the other women with skill and acuity, until she ascends the throne of power, even bearing the Sultan's child.
But "Harem Suare" is really about the furtive love affair that develops between Safiye and Nadir, a taboo-shattering relationship that mirrors the volatile shifts in political and historical developments outside the insular, closed-off world of the Sultan's harem. As the political and military might of the Ottoman Empire dissipates, leaving Safiye and Nadir attempting to reclaim their lives on the outside, they increasingly find themselves unable to adapt to their new surroundings.
A physically impressive production (the art designer is Oscar-winner Mustafa Ulkenciler), "Harem Suare" never really achieves any lift, any acceleration that enables the audience to connect with its characters.
During its worst moments, an exotic rubdown of oils between Safiye and her protectorate, the movie drifts rather uncomfortably into camp. Ozpetek recovers somewhat in the second half, when his touch is surer and more confident, the awkward language and dialogue doesn't seem quite so obvious and strained, but "Harem Suare" remains too unformed and ungainly to ever stand on its own.
HAREM SUARE
Tilde Corsi and Gianni Romoli present
An Italian-French-Turkish coproduction
R&C Srl (Rome), Les Films Balenciaga (Paris) and AFS Film (Istanbul)
Credits: Producers: Tilde Corsi, Gianni Romoli, Regine Konckier, Jean-Luc Ormieres, Assaf and Siddik Ozpetek; Director-writer: Ferzan Ozpetek; Screenwriter: Gianni Romoli; Cinematographer: Pasquale Mari; Production designer: Mustafa Ulkenciler; Costumes: Alfonsina Lettieri; Editor: Mauro Bonanni; Music: Pivio and Aldo de Scalzi; Cast: Safiye: Marie Gillain; Nadir: Alex Descas; Anita: Valeria Golino; Midhat: Malick Bowens; Sumbul: Christophe Aquilon; Abdulhamit: Haluck Bilginer; Running time: 106 minutes; No MPAA rating...
A French, Italian and Turkish co-production, "Harem Suare" has its own virtues, in particular the silky, sensuous lead performance from Belgian actress Marie Gillain, but the work is fatally undone by the lack of cultural identification and concentration necessary to piece together the faltered storytelling. The frequent shifts among French, Italian and Turkish only intensify the confusion. Ozpetek wrote the script with Italian writer Gianni Romoli. The leaps in time, the apparent flash forward of the two principal women, now in their mid-50s, recalling their involvement in a harem at the turn of the century, achieves the opposite effect. Instead of demystifying the experience and making it vivid, it only romanticizes the past.
Gillain, so memorable in Bertrand Tavernier's "Fresh Bait", plays Safiye, an impoverished Italian woman purchased in a Cairo slave market and presented, as a "gift," to Sultan Abdulhamit II (Haluck Bilginer) in 1907, at the twilight of the Ottoman Empire. Drawing on a combination of her sexual power and intelligence (she translates the operas for the Sultan, a fanatic of the art), Safiye quickly insinuates herself into the Sultan's elite inner circle, the most desired of his concubines. Through the elite training and watchful eye of Nadir (Alex Descas), a eunuch, Safiye quickly consolidates her power, eliminating her rivals, dispatching the other women with skill and acuity, until she ascends the throne of power, even bearing the Sultan's child.
But "Harem Suare" is really about the furtive love affair that develops between Safiye and Nadir, a taboo-shattering relationship that mirrors the volatile shifts in political and historical developments outside the insular, closed-off world of the Sultan's harem. As the political and military might of the Ottoman Empire dissipates, leaving Safiye and Nadir attempting to reclaim their lives on the outside, they increasingly find themselves unable to adapt to their new surroundings.
A physically impressive production (the art designer is Oscar-winner Mustafa Ulkenciler), "Harem Suare" never really achieves any lift, any acceleration that enables the audience to connect with its characters.
During its worst moments, an exotic rubdown of oils between Safiye and her protectorate, the movie drifts rather uncomfortably into camp. Ozpetek recovers somewhat in the second half, when his touch is surer and more confident, the awkward language and dialogue doesn't seem quite so obvious and strained, but "Harem Suare" remains too unformed and ungainly to ever stand on its own.
HAREM SUARE
Tilde Corsi and Gianni Romoli present
An Italian-French-Turkish coproduction
R&C Srl (Rome), Les Films Balenciaga (Paris) and AFS Film (Istanbul)
Credits: Producers: Tilde Corsi, Gianni Romoli, Regine Konckier, Jean-Luc Ormieres, Assaf and Siddik Ozpetek; Director-writer: Ferzan Ozpetek; Screenwriter: Gianni Romoli; Cinematographer: Pasquale Mari; Production designer: Mustafa Ulkenciler; Costumes: Alfonsina Lettieri; Editor: Mauro Bonanni; Music: Pivio and Aldo de Scalzi; Cast: Safiye: Marie Gillain; Nadir: Alex Descas; Anita: Valeria Golino; Midhat: Malick Bowens; Sumbul: Christophe Aquilon; Abdulhamit: Haluck Bilginer; Running time: 106 minutes; No MPAA rating...
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.