The full line-up will be unveiled on Tuesday, but we got a little Lido appetizer pair this morning. Opening the Horizons (aka Orrizonti) section it is Italian cinema that will be profiled with Valerio Mastandrea‘s Nonostante launching festivities. With about three decades under his belt as an actor, Mastandrea moved into feature filmmaking with Laughing (2018) – Torino Film Festival selection. Here is the synopsis:
A man spends peacefully his days in hospital without too many worries. He has been hospitalized for a while but that condition seems like the best way to live his life, safe from everything and everyone, without responsibilities and problems of any kind. It feels really good in there and even if some of his ward companions feel trapped, for them he can also feel free like nowhere else. That precious routine runs smoothly until a new person (Dolores Fonzi) is admitted to the same ward. She is a restless, angry companion, she accepts nothing of that condition, especially the unwritten rules. She is not willing to wait, she wants to leave that place better or even worse. She wants to live as she should or die, as happens to those who end up in there. He is overwhelmed by that fury, first trying to defend himself and then accepting something incomprehensible. That encounter will help him accept that if you choose to truly face your heart and your emotions, there is no possible repair.
In the non-competition section Horizons Extra, we find September 5 by Swiss filmmaker Tim Fehlbaum who gave us The Colony (also known as Tides) a 2021 Berlinale film selection. The filmmaker managed to lasso the likes of Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin and Leonie Benesch – and Sean Penn is one of the film’s producers. Here is the synopsis:
September 5 unveils the decisive moment that forever changed media coverage and continues to impact live news today. Set during the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, the film follows an American Sports broadcasting team that quickly adapted from sports reporting to live coverage of the Israeli athletes taken hostage. Through this lens, September 5 provides a powerful new perspective on the live broadcast seen globally by an estimated one billion people at the time. At the heart of the story is Geoff, a young and ambitious producer striving to prove himself to his boss, the legendary TV executive Roone Arledge. Together with Marianne (Leonie Benesch), a German interpreter, Geoff unexpectedly takes the helm of the live coverage. As narratives shift, time ticks away, and conflicting rumors spread, with the hostages’ lives hanging in the balance, Geoff grapples with tough decisions while confronting his own moral compass. How do you cover a situation like this if what the perpetrators want is the spotlight you give?
