‘Viva Polanski!’ Says Roman Polanski’s Producer After Lamenting That ‘The Palace’ May Not Be Released in France

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian multi-hyphenate Ilaria Borrelli’s Arabic-language feminist drama “The Goat” – featuring Mira Sorvino and John Savage, alongside a stellar Egyptian cast – is set for back-to-back launches at Egypt’s upcoming El Gouna Film Festival, followed by the closing film slot at the Rome Film Festival. A rare, if not unique, case of an Arab production directed by an Italian, “The Goat” stars young Egyptian TikTok star Jessica Hosam as an 11-year-old pregnant orphan named Hadya who after being forced into marriage becomes the target of a western corporation that seeks to control the only water source in her village.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s Fandango Sales has taken international distribution rights to quirky comedy “Volare” about the fear of flying that marks the directorial debut of actor Margherita Buy. Buy is known internationally for frequent roles in Nanni Moretti movies, most recently in “A Brighter Tomorrow” that launched from Cannes. Her smart concept movie is being lead-produced by Simone Gattoni for Kavac Film, the company founded by veteran auteur Marco Bellocchio.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s Indiana Production – which has just become part of pan-European studio Vuelta Group – is staying true to its roots with production kicking off this month on gender swap movie “Romeo is Juliet,” directed by quality comedy specialist Giovanni Veronesi, just as the company expands its horizons. This latest title in Indiana’s slate stars A-lister Sergio Castellitto and Pilar Fogliati (“Romantiche”) who plays an actress named Vittoria who after being brutally rejected by a cynical stage director when she auditions to play Juliet in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” decides to reinvent herself as a man to audition for Romeo and gets the part.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Netflix on Tuesday unveiled four new Italian originals – two feature films and two series – that confirm its continued investment in Italy as local subscribers grow. The new projects also bolster the fact that the bulk of the streamer’s Italian productions are not high end and have a primarily local focus.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian producer and director Ginevra Elkann, whose delicate first feature “If Only” opened the 2019 Locarno fest garnering critical praise, is at the Toronto Film Festival with her tonally different follow-up, “I Told You So.” The movie features a group made up mostly of women who are having a mental meltdown amid an unprecedented January heat wave in Rome. As the heat rises, so do the characters’ obsessions with sex, food, drugs, alcohol, and religion. The eclectic ensemble film, which was conceived by Elkann and her co-writers during the pandemic, features a star studded cast comprising Danny Huston – speaking perfect Italian on screen – as a heroin-addicted Italian-American priest.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Emmy-nominated “The White Lotus” star Sabrina Impacciatore will play the Venice Film Festival’s master of ceremonies in the upcoming second season of the Italian version of “Call My Agent,” which will also feature a cameo by Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera. Impacciatore, wearing a red gown, disembarked from a water taxi at the Excelsior Hotel pier on the Venice Lido on Saturday welcomed by Barbera, as cameras rolled for a key scene in the show.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Oscar-winning writer-director Bobby Moresco (“Crash”) is set to direct “Ferrari vs. Mercedes,” the latest movie set in Italy’s vintage auto racing world – following Moresco’s “Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend” and Micheal Mann’s “Ferrari” – being produced by Andrea Iervolino. Just like “Lamborghini,” which in the U.S.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent British director Luna Carmoon’s first feature “Hoard” has scored three prizes at the Venice Critics’ Week where the other standout title is Chilean documentary “Malqueridas.” In “Hoard,” which is set in 1984 London, 7-year-old Maria and her mother live in their own loving world built on sorting through bins and collecting shiny rubbish. One night, their world falls apart, and the film joins Maria a decade later, living with her foster mother.

One last story from Jon Bernthal’s podcast with David Ayer about “Suicide Squad.” Sorry, but this one’s full of juicy tidbits. OK, Bernthal has a podcast called “Real Ones,” where he brings his friends on mostly.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Luca Guadagnino, whose Zendaya-starrer “Challengers” was pulled as Venice Film Festival opener due to complications from the SAG-AFTRA strike, is on the Lido wearing his producer hat on several films. One, especially close to his heart, is animation short “The Meatseller” by debuting director Margherita Giusti.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian hotshot Pietro Castellitto is in competition in Venice with his second feature “Enea,” in which he also stars as the titular character, a young Roman sushi restaurant owner and cocaine dealer whose best friend Valentino just got his license as an airplane pilot. There is a lot going on in this fresh and frenzied film lensed by ace cinematographer Radek Ladczuk (“The Babadook”). “Enea” is produced by Lorenzo Mieli’s the Apartment, which is a Fremantle company, and Luca Guadagnino’s Frenesy.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian genre specialist Stefano Sollima – who is known in Hollywood for “Sicario: Day of the Soldado,” “Without Remorse” and the TV series “Gomorrah” – is in the Venice competition for the first time with Rome-set crime drama “Adagio.” This beautifully shot picture features an ensemble cast of Italian A-listers comprising Pierfrancesco Favino (“Nostalgia”), Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”), Valerio Mastandrea (“Perfect Strangers”) and Adriano Giannini (“The Ties”). It’s the tale of three old – and once mighty – mobsters searching for redemption in a cutthroat contemporary Rome that is literally burning. They find it in the form of a 16 year old named Manuel who is being blackmailed after venturing too deep in a rotting Roman underworld world that he doesn’t understand.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Giuliano Montaldo, the prolific Italian director, actor and film industry executive, whose works comprise powerful political drama “Sacco and Vanzetti” about the Massachusetts trial and execution in 1927 of accused Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, has died at his home in Rome. He was 93.

With 12 reviews so far, Roman Polanski’s latest film, “The Palace,” currently sits at a horrendous 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Polanski hasn’t really had a hit film in a very long time and has also been at the center of controversy for decades, but a 0% is still really rough, with some reviews calling it the worst movie of the year.

It’s hard to believe that it’s now over 60 years since Roman Polanski teamed up with Jerzy Skolimowski for the landmark 1962 Polish thriller Knife in the Water. But it’s even harder to believe that these two giants of international cinema reunited more recently to pool their braincells and come up with the most terrible, joyless farce since the heyday of the ’70s British sex comedy. Forget for a moment, if you can, the furor surrounding Polanski’s controversial status as a fugitive from justice and concentrate instead on the fact that the Venice Film Festival, in its infinite wisdom, went ahead and booked this entirely dreadful offering anyway, deeming it somehow worthy of a prestigious Out of Competition slot.

Roman Polanski’s Venice Film Festival feature The Palace received a 3 minute ovation tonight at its world premiere screening.

The cast, producers and collaborators of Roman Polanski’s The Palace showed their support for the filmmaker here in Venice today during a press conference for the movie that world premieres out of competition this evening. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Venice Gap-Financing Market is celebrating its 10-year anniversary this year with record-breaking attendance and impressive new figures on the projects that the core component of Venice’s industry side has helped bring to the big screen. All told, over the span of a decade, “We have had 370 films (including immersive) from 70 countries and 80% of them have been completed within six months after the festival,” says Pascal Diot who heads the Venice Production Bridge, as the Lido’s market is known.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent France’s UFO Distribution has acquired French rights to Venice Horizons entry “An Endless Sunday” by first-time Italian director Alain Parroni from Fandango Sales. The film will segue from Venice to Toronto where it screens in the fest’s Discovery section.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Saverio Costanzo, who was last in the Venice competition in 2014 with Adam Driver-starrer “Hungry Hearts,” is back on the Lido with “Finally Dawn.” The 1950s-set film stars Lily James plays a slightly fading American diva named Josephine Esperanto, who’s shooting a swords and sandals epic at Cinecittà when the famed filmmaking facilities were known as Hollywood on the Tiber. At the studios, Esperanto intersects with a young Roman woman named Mimosa, who is auditioning as an extra and takes a shine to her innocence. A “Dolce Vita” night follows in which Esperanto, Mimosa and the Hollywood epic’s other U.S.