16/03/2011

In the days in which the country is readying to celebrate 150 years of Italian unification, with some controversy, the RIFF - Rome Independent Film Festival is looking to a new crop of local directors. The 10th edition of this important event for Independent Italian production, running from March 18-24 at Rome’s Nuovo Cinema Aquila, opens with 5 (Cinque), the debut feature of Francesco Dominedò.

Presented as a cross between Romanzo Criminale [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michele Placido
film profile] and Pulp Fiction, 5 (Cinque) is the story of five adolescents who meet in a juvenile detention center, where they’re locked for petty crimes. They band together to pull off a big bank robbery. But drugs, women and the good life will catapult them into a world much more ruthless than their own.

The festival also features comedies, a genre that in Italy continues to reap success (see news), such as Gian Paolo Vallati’s Cara, Ti Amo (“Honey, I Love You”), in which four male friends pushing 40 svelano, through comic and surreal situations, the craziness of the modern woman. The director calls it "a classic comedy, made for wide audiences, that cost what about 50 seconds of Manual of Love 3 [+see also:
trailer
making of
film profile] cost."

The festival program offers another seven Italian features, a section of foreign films (see news), shorts and documentaries. The latter includes Disoccupato in Affitto (“Unemployed Man for Hire”) by Luca Merloni, the provocative journey of an unemployed Italian who travels to nine cities in Italy to find work, wearing a sign from which the film takes its title.

Organized with support from the Ministry of Culture, the Lazio Region and the City of Rome, the festival, whose €200,000 budget came in part from private funds as well, will award the winning Italian feature film with distribution. The Ministry of Youth is partner in the award, and will guarantee the film screenings in several Rome cinemas.

(Translated from Italian)