28/09/2011

As expected, representing Italy in the running for the 2012 Oscars will be Emanuele Crialese’s Terraferma [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Emanuele Crialese
interview: Emanuele Crialese
film profile] (see the interview).

Screened at the latest Venice Film Festival, where it won the Jury’s Special Prize (news),the film is a contender for the shortlist (which the Academy will announce on January 24) from which the Best Foreign Language Film will be chosen on February 26. A nomination which was much awaited and hoped for: “An Oscar nomination? The hope of being pre-selected is great, it would be wonderful,” Crialese said otwo days ago when he was in Rome receiving the Pasinetti Award, given by Italian film journalists.

Recently also well-received at the Toronto Film Festival, and in the programme of the London Film Festival and the Rio Cine Festival at the beginning of October, Terraferma, is an account of the problematic encounter between illegal immigrants and the inhabitants of an island in southern Italy, won out over seven other candidates (see news), among which Nanni Moretti’s Habemus papam [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nanni Moretti
film profile] stood out.

The question is whether with this choice, made by the Selection Committee appointed by Anica on behalf of the Academy Award, Italy will manage to win over American Jury members and make it into the final shortlist, something that hasn’t happened since 2006 with Cristina Comencini’s Don’t Tell [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. Last year the Italian candidate for the Oscars was The First Beautiful Thing [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Paolo Virzì.

Terraferma, currently in third place at the Italian Box Office with takings of 964 thousand Euros, is produced by Cattleya in collaboration with Rai Cinema and in association with Regione Sicilia, and stars Filippo Pucillo, Donatella Finocchiaro, Mimmo Cuticchio and Giuseppe Fiorello.

(Translated from Italian)