The Cathay Pacific Italian Film Festival brings the latest Italian films to New Zealand’s towns and cities. Each year Italophiles, romantics, and those interested in European culture are spoilt by the range of films on offer. From comedy to romantic comedy and drama to, err, romantic drama, the Italian Film Festival presents a menu completa of the most popular in contemporary Italian cinema.

This year director Tony Lambert has assembled an elegant mix. A documentary, a historical drama and a thriller interlace the reels of the stock romances. The historical drama, The Passion of Joshua the Jew, explores the origins of the persecution of Jews in Europe (though sensitive types beware: it has been compared to Mel Gibson’s brutal The Passion of Christ). The documentary, How We Ruined the Italian Movie Business, traces the friendship and achievements of two famous Sicilian actors in a comedic gallivant through Italian cinematic history. And Non Aver Paura, a popular release in Italy, is described as a ‘white-knuckle’ thriller that deals with manipulation and fantasy in personal relationships.

While most of the seventeen films in this year’s line up never stray from the great Italian theme of love, two deal with interesting variations on this theme. Ice on Fire and The Keys to the House investigate if and how love can overcome the trials of illness and impairment in romantic or familial relationships.

Fans of the comic genius Roberto Benigni will be excited to see his 2005 release The Tiger and the Snow thrown into this year’s misto. Similarly to Benigni’s most famous work to date Life is Beautiful, this film contains scenes of war (this time, Iraq) and love. Revered in Italy for his brilliant wit and hilariously physical acting, Benigni’s popularity is growing exponentially. He has now both directed and starred in eight feature films.

Another virtuoso director, Marco Tullio Giordana (renown for his daring 100 Steps, about a young Sicilian mafia victim), has created the most politically interesting film of the festival: Once You’re Born You Can No Longer Hide. Focusing on a hot topic in Europe (and indeed the world) at present, Giordana empathetically presents the plight of the world’s clandestine immigrants. The film focuses on the thousands of clandestini who cross the Mediterranean Sea by boat each year, in a desperate bid to reach the prosperity of Italy.

The Italian Film Festival arrives in Auckland on October 4th, before entertaining Wellington (18th), Christchurch (25th), Dunedin (November 1st), Nelson (8th), Napier (15th), and Hamilton (22nd) with a gala opening. On offer this night, along with various Italian bevande, is the film Manual of Love. This film does what contemporary Italian cinema arguably does best: energetic, crazy romantic comedy full of cute couples, emotional outbursts and Vespa scooters.

The festival concludes with Ermanno Olmi’s Singing Behind the Screens, a Italian-Chinese high sea epic (slash love story, of course), filmed entirely on a lake in Montenegro.

As the festival rounds the corner of its first decade here in New Zealand, and speeds on into its eleventh year, it can only gain inertia. With this much variety on offer and this many opportunities to see films otherwise impossible to view on the big screen in New Zealand, anyone with an interest in things Italian should be sure to make it along.—Melody Nixon

» italianfilmfestival.co.nz