Italian Film Business Bounces Back With Production Percolating as Box Office Picks Up
variety.comNick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy — which is the Country of Focus at this year’s European Film Market in Berlin — is flourishing in terms of production activity just as its box office grosses start to pick up.
Yet there’s room for improvement in terms of the number of titles that are able to break out internationally. The Cinema Italiano output currently stands at over 350 movies a year, including co-productions, which is up compared with pre-pandemic levels.
Still, while exports are growing, Italy only has a handful of directors — such as Paolo Sorrentino, Luca Guadagnino, Matteo Garrone and Alice Rohrwacher — whose movies consistently manage to travel around the world.
That said, a new generation of Italian auteurs is emerging. Case in point are the country’s two titles in the Berlin Film Festival competition: star-studded sci-fi film “Another End,” and musical comedy “Gloria!” “Another End” is the sophomore work by Piero Messina, whose first film, “The Wait,” launched at Venice with a splash in 2015. “End” stars Gael García Bernal and Renate Reinsve (“The Worst Person in the World”) as lovers caught in an unusual bind. “Gloria!,” by first-time director Margherita Vicario, is set in an 18th century Venetian girls’ boarding school.
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