Che Figata! Italian Film Fest Returns to Bangkok This Week

Still from the film “Happy as Lazzaro.” Image: Alice Rohrwacher/Netflix
Still from the film “Happy as Lazzaro.” Image: Alice Rohrwacher/Netflix

Here’s a chance to meet fellow Italophiles and cinephiles.

The 5th Italian Film Festival Bangkok, which is returning for another year to celebrate a diplomatic relationship between Thailand and Italy, aims to give visitors a front row seat to see what “The Boot” has to offer in film experiences. 

It kicks off later this week with a selection of 10 Italian-language films at two Bangkok alternative cinemas. The event will open with a screening of Un’Avventura (“Forever You” in English). The musical tells a powerful love story set in the ’70s, and features the hit songs of Italian singer-songwriter Lucio Battisti, who is widely recognized for songs that defined that decade’s era of Italian songwriting.

Un’Avventura shows with Thai and English subtitles at 9pm, May 16 at the standalone cinema Scala Theatre — which turns exactly 50 years old this year despite having been threatened to be demolished many times — in the heart of Bangkok, near BTS Siam. Admission for that is free, but advanced online registration is required.

After that, from May 17 until May 26, the films will show at Cinema Oasis, an indie arthouse cinema on Sukhumvit Road. The highlights include the 2018 Cannes Film Festival winner for Best Screenplay, Happy as Lazzaro, a drama that’s loosely based on a true story of a boy from a wealthy, prominent family who faked his own kidnapping.

There will also be a screening of Il Primo Re (“Romulus & Remus – The First King” in English), a nine million Euro production that retells the Roman myth of the twin brothers who founded the city of Rome. Here’s the trailer, in case you’re curious.




Fans of period dramas, on the other hand, can opt for Capri-Revolution, which draws inspiration from a rural island that became home to a community of New Age free thinkers in the early 20th century.

Cinephiles who enjoyed David Fincher’s The Social Network may enjoy The Startup (2017), a semi-biographical drama that centers around teen student-turned-successful entrepreneur Matteo Achilli, dubbed the “Italian Mark Zuckerberg,” and how he came to create his networking site Egomnia.

All films at Cinema Oasis are screened in Italian with English subtitles. Admission for each screening is THB160. Cinema Oasis is an arthouse cinema, which opened just last year and is owned by two directors of the banned film Shakespeare Must Die. The more you know!

The complete schedule is available online here. The 5th Italian Film Festival, organized by Dante Alighieri Cultural Association and Embassy of Italy, will run from May 16 through May 26.

 

FIND IT:
Italian Film Festival Bangkok 2019
May 16 to May 27
Cinema Oasis, 4 Soi Sukhumvit 43, Watthana, Bangkok
Phone: +66 97 929 5366
BTS Phrom Phong

Read more Coconuts Bangkok stories here.



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