Three Italian films will be among
the contenders in the main competition at the Cannes Film
Festival next month, organizers said Thursday.
They are Nanni Moretti's Mia Madre (My Mother),
Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino's Youth and Matteo Garrone's Il
Racconto dei Racconti (Tale of the Tales).
"We are happy and proud to represent Italy at the next
Cannes festival," the three directors said in a joint statement.
"We're aware that it's a great opportunity for us and for
the whole of Italian cinema".
Moretti's film Mia Madre stars American actor John Turturro
and Italy's Margherita Buy as a director shooting a film while
her mother is dying in hospital.
Sorrentino's English-language film stars Harvey Keitel and
Michael Caine as an ageing writer and a composer reflecting on
life and art while on vacation in the Alps.
Tale of the Tales by Garrone is a big-budget fantasy of
interwoven stories starring Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel and Alba
Rohrwacher, based on a collection of stories by 17th-century
Neapolitan author Giambattista Basile.
Commenting on Sorrentino and Garrone's choice of shooting
their movies in English, festival director Thierry Fremaux said
"English is the Esperanto...a world language, not necessarily
tied to just one country".
The nominations "emphasize the vitality of our motion
picture industry," said Culture Minister Dario Franceschini.
"The Cannes Film Festival programmers' selection of three
Italian films for competition is a reward to our cinema, which
is speaking to the world once again - as it did during the
beautiful post-war years and during the economic boom".
Two of the three selected films have received funding from
the culture ministry, as did The Other Side by Italian-American
director Roberto Minervini, which was invited to compete the Un
Certain Regard section.
Garrone, Moretti and Sorrentino are no strangers to the red
carpet at Cannes.
Garrone's Gomorrah, a film adaptation of Roberto Saviano's
award-winning book, was nominated for the Palme d'Or and won the
Grand Prix at Cannes inn 2008.
Moretti won the Palme d'Or in 2001 with The Son's Room and
in 2012 he was festival jury president.
Sorrentino was nominated for the Palme D'Or for 2004's The
Consequences of Love in 2004 and Oscar-winner The Great Beauty
in 2013.
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