One of our favourite films of last year returns to the big screen. There’s no excuse to miss it, or the rest of this year’s Cinema Italiano Festival.
Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers isn’t the only film playing cinemas that stars Josh O’Connor and will arouse your… feelings. La Chimera was a standout at last year’s NZ International Film Festival, earning it tenth spot on our favourite movies of 2023. Since then, it hasn’t been available to see anywhere, but you can catch it screening in the very near future—with the Cinema Italiano Festival now underway in Auckland (and making its way around the country over the coming months).
Directed by Alice Rohrwacher, La Chimera follows O’Connor’s dishevelled Englishman through a woozy 1980s Tuscany. Blessed(?) with a preternatural ability to uncover 2000-year-old Etruscan artefacts, he’s haunted by his own past, even while pillaging the histories of others to earn a living via the black market. A gorgeously shot pic, one that’s populated by uniformly winning performances, La Chimera sees Rohrwacher confidently juggle joy and melancholy as we are taken on a tour through the physical and psychological ruins of a distant and more recent past.
As Sarah Thomson wrote after seeing La Chimera at NZ International Film Festival: “Beautiful and broken, our band of ‘tombaroli’ (gravediggers) led by a magnetic Josh O’Connor, raid the countryside’s past to provide for their present—both as the many-headed beast and the impossible liminal dream of the film’s title. Stunning.”
Also playing in the Cinema Italiano Festival (whose next stops after Auckland are New Plymouth, Havelock North and Napier before heading elsewhere) are Cannes winner The Eight Mountains, Palme d’Or nominated historical drama Kidnapped (Rapito) and plenty more—including Caravaggio’s Shadow, The Genius of Gianni Versace Alive and classics like Nanni Moretti’s 1993 Cannes best director winner Dear Diary (Caro Diario) and Fellini romcom The White Sheik.
Visit the Cinema Italiano Festival website for full programme and session details – but here’s an overview of when the fest is coming your way:
Auckland – April 29 to May 22
New Plymouth – May 20 to June 9
Havelock North – July 24 to August 11
Napier – July 25 to August 4
Palmerston North – July 29 to August 4
Blenheim – August 8 to 18
Christchurch – September 4 to 29
Nelson – September 5 to 22
Tauranga – September 11 to October 2
Hamilton – September 12 to 29
Matakana – September 13 to 22
Papamoa – September 18 to 25
Wanaka – September 18 to 29
Arrowtown – September 30 to October 7
Masterton – November 4 to 10
Wellington – November 6 to December 5
Dunedin – November 7 to 17
