N.I.C.E. New Italian Cinema Festival

Within bilateral collaboration, in association with the Embassy of Italy in Moscow.

N.I.C.E. (New Italian Cinema Events) is a festival with a long history spanning several Russian cities. The annual Moscow N.I.C.E. will take place on 25-30 of Septamber at the Oktyabr Cinema and in the Engineering Building of the Tretyakov Gallery. The program includes 9 contemporary Italian films.

The main emphasis of the festival are debuts and independent cinema. The opening film, In viaggio con Adele, is the first full-length film by Alessandro Capitani, who received the Italian national film award in 2016 for the best short film. The new feature is a comedy about a girl with Asperger Syndrome who never takes off her pink jumpsuit with bunny ears. After the sudden death of the mother, Adele first meets her father. Together they will try to establish contact with each other. 

Another debut picture of the program is a musical drama Saremo giovani e bellissimi by Letizia Lamartire. A hooligan comedy Brave Ragazze is about the four female bank robbers. A social and mystical drama Lucania is Gigi Roccati’s work, the documentary filmmaker and founder of the movie studio Ardita Film. A docufiction Butterfly is the story of Irma Testa, the first Italian woman boxer admitted to the Olympic Games. In contrast, at the festival there’s a true male criminal story Gli uomini d'oro, which ridiculously echoes the Russian agenda: a driver of the secure cash delivery vehicle decides to steal the money after the pension reform destroyed his dreams.

The three highlights of the festival program is an intercultural drama Il vegetarian about a milker named Krishna, a touching family movie Mare di grano, starring Ornella Muti, and a documentary project Cinecittà - I mestieri del cinema (Bernardo Bertolucci: No End Travelling). This memoir film combines the memories of the author Mario Sesti and a previously unknown video of his conversation with Bertolucci.