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Beta Film has announced a half-dozen sales to European public broadcasters on high-end period drama “La Storia,” which is Italian pubcaster Rai’s biggest event show of the year and is world premiering at the Rome Film Fest.

The sweeping eight-episode saga, set in Italy during the final years of World War II and its immediate aftermath, is based on a globally bestselling novel by the late great Elsa Morante, whom “My Brilliant Friend” author Elena Ferrante often cites as her primary literary reference.

Set mostly in Rome between 1940 and 1948, “La Storia” looks at fascism and Italy’s early postwar period through a female prism. Ida, a half Jewish widow with a teenage son named Nino, is raped by a drunken German soldier and gets pregnant with Useppe. The tale is centered on how she survives her predicament.

Ahead of the Rome Film Fest premiere of its first two episodes on Friday,...

On a cobblestone-paved square in the ancient town of Tivoli, north-east of Rome, in late September, a large crew is prepping to shoot a key scene in Italian period drama “La Storia,” which will be pubcaster Rai’s biggest event show next year.

Based on a bestselling novel by the late great Elsa Morante – whom “My Brilliant Friend” author Elena Ferrante often cites as her primary literary reference – “La Storia” is set during the final years of World War II and its immediate aftermath in Italy.

The eight-episode series, being unveiled by Beta Film to buyers at Rome’s Mia content market, stars Italian A-list actor Jasmine Trinca – who earlier this year was a member of the Cannes jury – as Ida, a single mother of two sons, who hides her Jewish heritage and fights against poverty and persecution.

The Tivoli square, where costumed extras are taking their positions, is a...

It feels like some lost Italian masterpiece from the 1970s. unearthed from a locked vault after decades of gathering dust and slotted into the middle of a late De Sica/ mid-period Francesco Rosi triple feature. The score borrows bits of classical music, Sixties Euro-pop and Eighties Italo-disco — perfect for a period piece rife with both vintage signifiers and modern anachronisms. All the talk of socialism vs. staunch individualism could have come straight from a beer hall in 1920 or a presidential town hall in 2020. It’s a last-century tale whose preoccupations with ambition,...

Quite like the scorpion that stings the frog that’s offered to transport it to the other side of the river, simply because it’s in its perverse nature to do so, so does Martin Eden offer up an ultimately caustic view of human endeavor that gives the heave-ho to constant striving and the best intentions.

This vividly rendered Italian take on Jack London’s 1909 novel brandishes a cutting intelligence and a powerful star turn by Luca Marinelli, whose performance earned him best actor kudos at last year’s Venice Film Festival, and who launched his American career earlier this year with The Old Guard.

Pietro Marcello’s second feature film is shot through with vibrant imagination and a lively intelligence, but the way the story turns on itself and, ultimately, on the viewer as well, is disconcerting to the point of betrayal.

London was an agitating political socialist and...

"I'd rather drink poison than break my back for you." Kino Lorber has released an official US trailer for the Italian drama Martin Eden, which first premiered at the Venice Film Festival last year to tons of acclaim. It also played at the Toronto & New York Film Festivals last year. The film is adapted from Jack London's 1909 novel of the same name, but recreated as a very Italian story. Italian actor Luca Marinelli won the Best Actor prize in Venice for playing Martin, then went on to co-star in Netflix's The Old Guard this year. Martin Eden struggles to rise above his destitute, proletarian circumstances with an intense and passionate pursuit of self-education, hoping to achieve a place among the literary elite as a famed writer. The film also stars Jessica Cressy, Vincenzo Nemolato, Marco Leonardi, Carlo Cecchi, Pietro Ragusa, Denise Sardisco, Carmen Pommella, Elisabetta Valgoi, & Savino Paparella.

The Song Of Names star Clive Owen with producer Robert Lantos and director François Girard at Sony in New York Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

François Girard’s The Song Of Names, based on the novel by Norman Lebrecht, screenplay by Jefferey Caine with a score by Howard Shore is produced by Robert Lantos, Lyse Lafontaine and Nick Hirschkorn, and stars Tim Roth and Clive Owen with Catherine McCormack, Jonah Hauer-King (Prince Eric in Rob Marshall’s upcoming The Little Mermaid), Luke Doyle, Gerran Howell, Misha Handley, and Eddie Izzard.

Martin (Gerran Howell) with Dovidl (Jonah Hauer-King) in The Song Of Names Photo: Sabrina Lantos

From what Ed Bahlman calls the 'fantastic' documentary Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould to The Red Violin (Oscar to John Corigliano for Best Original Score), starring Samuel L Jackson, Greta Scacchi, Jason Flemyng, Carlo Cecchi and Sylvia Chang, François Girard is no stranger to films centered around music.

Pietro Marcello in front of an Andrei Tarkovsky Stalker and Satyajit Ray Apu Trilogy posters: “For me Martin Eden is a very contemporary character. So my objective was to span over the entire 20th century …” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden star Luca Marinelli (Andrea in Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning The Great Beauty) in the title role won the Best Actor Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival where the film had its world première. Based on the 1909 novel by Jack London, with a screenplay co-written with Maurizio Braucci, Martin Eden, shot by Alessandro Abate and Francesco Di Giacomo, represents the 20th Century unlike any other film. Jessica Cressy, Vincenzo Nemolato, Marco Leonardi, Carlo Cecchi, Denise Sardisco and Carmen Pommella feature in the excellent ensemble surrounding our troubled hero.

Pietro Marcello on Luca Marinelli in Martin Eden: “We do love Martin Eden in the first part of the film because he's authentic,...

The film won the Coppa Volpi in Venice and the Platform award at Tiff.

The UK’s New Wave Films and Germany’s Piffl are among the international distributors to have snapped up rights to Pietro Marcello’s award-winning Jack London adaptation Martin Eden from leading German sales outfit The Match Factory.

Sales on the Venice and Toronto favourite have also been secured to Japan, (Mimosa), Benelux (Imagine), Bulgaria (Art Fest), Hungary (Cirko Film), Baltics (Kino Pasavaris), Greece (Weird Wave), Taiwan (Swallow Wings), Spain (Wanda) and Israel (Lev Cinemas). They follow the recently-announced North American sale to Kino Lorber.

Martin...

"Fight for them, Martin." The Match Factory has debuted an official promo trailer for the Italian drama Martin Eden, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival just recently. It also played at the Toronto Film Festival, and will next stop by the New York Film Festival this fall. The film is adapted from Jack London's 1909 novel of the same name, but recreated as a very Italian story. Italian actor Luca Marinelli won the Best Actor prize in Venice for playing Martin. Martin Eden struggles to rise above his destitute, proletarian circumstances through an intense and passionate pursuit of self-education, hoping to achieve a place among the literary elite as a writer. The film also stars Jessica Cressy, Vincenzo Nemolato, Marco Leonardi, Denise Sardisco, Carmen Pommella, Carlo Cecchi, Elisabetta Valgoi, Pietro Ragusa, & Savino Paparella. This film will appeal to cinephiles the most, as it's extra artsy and dense, but still worth a look.

Jack London is one of those writers who lost their place in the pantheon of greats at home but remains a major early 20th-century author in Europe. Though best known in the States for his wilderness novels, London’s key novel is “Martin Eden,” a semi-autobiographical work tracing his background from unschooled sailor to celebrated writer, encompassing all his class anger, political musings and intense dissatisfaction with the life he created. It was made into a forgotten 1942 film starring Glenn Ford and then adapted for TV in the 1970s by the Germans, the French and even the Soviets, all of whom undoubtedly tempered London’s entrenched libertarianism to suit their purposes. Now Pietro Marcello (“The Mouth of the Wolf”) has made it the subject of his sprawling first full-fiction film, sticking close to the narrative while setting it in an undefinable 20th-century moment to make his own statements about the creative process,...

Jack London — an avowed socialist who found himself struggling to reconcile his political ideals with his personal success — intended for “Martin Eden” to be a damning critique of the individualism that spurred his fame. “White Fang” and “The Call of the Wild” had earned the low-born writer an invitation into high society, but he struggled to square the untamed working man he was with the celebrated author he’d suddenly become; still at heart the same person he had always been, London was disgusted to see how differently the ruling class now looked at someone they once despised. What self-serving bullshit! Why should anyone beg for a member of the elite to throw them their own private lifeline when all of the workers could band together and raise everyone to the same level?

And so London scraped out a book about a scruffy wanderer who falls in love with a rich girl,...

Snagging a special mention after a premiere in Un Certain Regard at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival (where it received a commendation from the Ecumenical jury), actress Valeria Golino’s directorial debut Honey played to generally warm reception and even snagged seven David di Donatello Award nods (but went home empty handed). A limited theatrical in the Us in March of 2014 didn’t seem to attract much of a response, unfortunate considering Golino has made quite an expressive and enjoyable film, perhaps lost in a sea of strong titles coming out of Italy over the past two years that seem to have saturated conversation.

Golino hinges an intriguing character study around the thorny topic of euthanasia, with her directorial debut. Jasmine Trinca stars as an assisted suicide activist, a beautiful harbinger of oblivion, and it would seem that death certainly becomes her in this meditative tale that avoids polemics in favor of self-discovery and exploration.

Jasmine Trinca and Carlo Cecchi as Honey and Grimaldi in Miele. "It's very interesting how Valeria used music. It is not at all a score." Valeria Golino's first-rate debut feature Honey (Miele) is about breaking boundaries, looking at boundaries. It is the second film following Paolo Sorrentino's Oscar-winning The Great Beauty to receive support in the Us from the newly created partnership "Cinema Made In Italy" programme created by the Instituto Luce-Cinecittà, the Italian Trade Commission and Emerging Pictures.

Honey is played with subtle layers of emotion by Jasmine Trinca who gives the character a searching physicality and the strength of appetite to move forward. We get to glimpse into the life of a young woman who has created a world of rituals for herself. Honey's job is to provide aid to the terminally ill to end their life with dignity.

In New York, Jasmine and I discussed...

With striking compositions and cuts that reveal a deep appreciation of cinema's possibilities, Valeria Golino's Honey could be about anything at all and still demand and hold your attention; that the narrative is as moving as the film is aesthetically precise is an added delight.

Jasmine Trinca stars as Irene, a young woman who performs assisted suicides for the terminally ill. Irene has a relatively stable existence, with a lover and periodic trips to Mexico for work. Things become complex, however, when she supplies fatal drugs to Carlo (Carlo Cecchi), a man who turns out to be perfectly healthy.

As Irene tries to recover the drugs, she and Carlo develop an unlikely friendship. That last sentence might sound like a logline for a Hollywood buddy comedy, but ...

Helps the Medicine Go Down: Golino’s Winning, Striking Debut

Actress Valeria Golino hinges an intriguing character study around the thorny topic of euthanasia, with her directorial debut, Honey. Jasmine Trinca stars as an assisted suicide activist, a beautiful harbinger of oblivion, and it would seem that death certainly becomes her in this meditative tale that avoids polemics in favor of self-discovery and exploration. Light in narrative events, choosing to focus instead on her protagonist’s work interactions, which are always conveyed with a muted, yet respectful empathy, Golino’s film is an adept and engrossing debut, enhanced by a hypnotizing soundtrack and striking visuals.

Irene (Jasmine Trinca), masquerades as Honey, an operative in a secret ring of professionals that specialize in assisted suicide with terminally ill patients. She gets her assignments from her ex-lover (Libero Di Rienzo), a hospital physician. It’s Irene/Honey’s job to meet with...

Honey (Miele) Emerging Pictures Director: Valeria Golino Screenplay: Angela Del Fabbro Cast: Jasmine Trinca, Carlo Cecchi, Libero De Rienzo, Vinicio Marchioni, Laia Forte, Roberto De Francesco, Barbara Ronchi, Masssimiliano, Claudio Guain, Valeria Bilello Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 2/27/14 Opens: March 7, 2014 For all we know, Dr. Kevorkian is chatting amiably now with some of the folks he dispatched at their request, but though Dr. Death is not with us here in Earth any longer, the subject of assisted suicide comes up now and then. In the U.S. Oregon has been the leader among the progressive states that rationally allow people to do what they want with their own  [ Read More ]

The post Honey (Miele) Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Emerging Pictures recently announced “Cinema Made In Italy,” a major new initiative between Istituto Luce- Cinecittà, the Italian Trade Commission and Emerging Pictures that will pro-vide distribution and marketing support to five major Italian films with the goal of broadening the audience for Italian cinema in the United States. Emerging will oversee the initiative and distribute Gianni Amelio’s L’Intrepido, Marco Bellocchio’s Dormant Beauty, Bernardo Bertolucci’s Me And You and Valeria Golino’s Honey in 2014.

These four recent Italian works will receive marketing and distribution support from a fund created by Istituto Luce- Cinecittà and the Italian Trade Commission. The first film in the series was Paolo Sorrentino’s masterful Academy Award nominated The Great Beauty. Since it was released by Janus Films with support from the Cinema Made In Italy program, it has become one of the most acclaimed foreign language films of the year. It also won the Golden Globe, European Film Award and is nominated for the BAFTA and Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film.

All five films will receive a nationwide release. Theaters will be announced shortly. Each of the films will have a full marketing and publicity campaign overseen by Emerging Pictures and supported by Istituto Luce-Cinecittà and the Italian Trade Commission.

Ira Deutchman, Managing Partner of Emerging Pictures, said, “Italian cine- ma has always captured the imagination of American audiences since the hey-day of Fellini, Pasolini, Visconti, De Sica and Rossellini. Our goal is to create a marketing and distribution initiative that will allow new Italian films to regularly enter the marketplace with a presence and to help create an ongoing new audience. We’re thrilled to be working with Istituto Luce-Cinecittà and the Italian Trade Commission to create this truly groundbreaking program.”

“Luce Cinecitta' is proud to test this new way to promote Italian cinema abroad,” said Istituto Luce-Cinecitta’ Chief Executive Officer Roberto Cicut- to. “Thanks to the funds provided by the Ministry of Economic Development and The Italian Trade Commission (Agenzia Ice) in addition to those provid- ed by the Ministry of Culture in partnership with Emerging Pictures, we will be able to give the largest theatrical distribution to recent Italian titles direct- ed by very prestigious auteurs. Italian cinema is well known worldwide for its glorious past and for such great contemporary directors as Bertolucci, Bellocchio, Moretti, Sorrentino, Garrone, Amelio and others. This new platform will give our movies the chance to be seen in a wide array of theaters throughout the U.S., and not just in specialized art houses in a few big cities. The recent outstanding success of Sorrentino's ‘Great Beauty,’ a Janus release, with our support, shows there is great potential here for Italian cinema. We look for- ward to increasing the availability of Italian films to our American friends.”

Dr. Carlo Angelo Bocchi, Trade Commissioner, Italian Trade Commission, said, "We have been working in the past two years with all the institutions mentioned by Roberto with two main goals: to get the Italian movie industry as the most important made-in-Italy tool for the commercial promotion of our country in the U.S., to try to reach the widest possible audience for viewing Italian movies. The support of different public institutions was central to building a project that was from the outset commercial: the movie industry is quintessentially important to promoting wine, food, fashion, design, technology, tourism and Italian style, together with the expression of our cultural values, trends and innovations. Italian cinema provides a single, comprehensive tool for achieving that meaningful goal. With ‘The Great Beauty,’ our first film, Cinema Made in Italy makes its debut in 25 cities, in more than 100 theaters in 15 states. This far-reaching exposure is exactly what we were searching for in our partnership with Emerging Pictures, and we are very happy that this first film in our Italian movie series is already appearing throughout the United States.”

About Emerging Pictures

Emerging Pictures, managed by Barry Rebo and Ira Deutchman, is the pre- mier all-digital Specialty Film and Alternative Content network of theaters in the United States. The company delivers independent films, cultural pro- grams and special events to a network of approximately 400 North American venues encompassing traditional art houses, museums and performing arts centers as well as commercial multiplexes including Allen Theatres, Angelika/ Reading Theatres, Big Cinemas, Bow Tie Cinemas, Marcus Theatres, Carmike Cinemas, Digiplex Destination Cinemas, Harkins Theatres, Laemmle Theaters, Muvico Theaters, Regency Theatres and others. The company also distributes live and captured live performances worldwide of the Bolshoi Ballet and some of the world’s foremost opera houses, including Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, under its Ballet in Cinema and Opera in Cinema brands.

About Istituto Luce-Cinecitta

Istituto Luce - Cinecittà (www.cinecittaluce.it) is the state-owned company whose main shareholder is the Italian Ministry for Culture. Istituto Luce - Cinecittà’s institutional work includes promoting Italian cinema both at home and abroad by means of projects dedicated to the great directors of the past and their classic films, as well contemporary ones. During the main In- ternational Film Festivals Istituto Luce - Cinecittà prepares multifunctional spaces that help to the promotion of our cinematography and it is the refer- ence place for all Italian and foreign operators Istituto Luce - Cinecittà holds one of the most important film and photographic archive both of its own pro- ductions, and private collections and acquisitions from a variety of sources. Istituto Luce - Cinecittà also distributes films made by Italian and European directors and guarantees they are given an adequate release on the national market. The team for the promotion of contemporary cinema continues to col- laborate with all of the major film festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Shanghai, Tokyo, Locarno, New York , London, etc, by orga- nizing the national selections, the presence of Italian films and artists in the various festivals, and providing an expository and promotional space within all the major International film markets. We are also involved with the orga- nization of numerous events which take place in countries with strong com- mercial potential such as : The Italian cinema festival in Tokyo, Open Roads – New Italian cinema in New York, Cinema Italian Style in Los Angeles, The Festival of Italian cinema of Barcelona and The Mittelcinemafest. Istituto

Luce - Cinecittà also owns a film library, Cineteca, which contains around 3000 titles of the most significant Italian film productions, subtitled in foreign languages, which serve in promoting Italian culture at major national and in- ternational Institutes around the world. Istituto Luce - Cinecittà is also re- sponsible for editing a daily news magazine on-line: CinecittàNews (news.cinecitta.com) which delivers the latest breaking news on the principal activities involving Italian cinema as well as its developing legislative and in- stitutional aspects.

About The Italian Trade Commission The Ice-Italian Trade Promotion Agency is the government organization which promotes the internationalization of the Italian companies, in line with the strategies of the Ministry for Economic Development. Ice provides in- formation, support and advice to Italian and foreign companies. In addition to its Rome headquarters, Ice operates worldwide from a large network of Trade Promotion Offices linked to Italian embassies and consulates and work- ing closely with local authorities and businesses. Ice provides a wide range of services overseas helping Italian and foreign businesses to connect with each other

About The Films

Dormant Beauty (Bella Addormentata)

Release Date: Tbc Director: Marco Bellocchio Producer: Riccardo Tozzi, Fabio Conversi, Marco Chimenz, Giovanni Sta- bilini

Screenplay: Marco Bellocchio, Veronica Raimo, Stefano Rulli Cast: Toni Servillo, Isabelle Huppert, Alba Rohrwacher Festivals: Venice 2012, Toronto 2012

Three stories, taking place over the course of a few days, involving a con- science-stricken politician, an obsessive mother and two young protestors on different sides, are skillfully interwoven in this gripping, beautifully realized film. Set against the background of the emotional and controversial real-life 2008 euthanasia case of Eluana Englaro, Dormant Beauty is a subtle and complex depiction of recent Italian history.

The Great Beauty

(released by Janus Films) - In Release Director: Paolo Sorrentino (Il Divo) Producer: Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima Screenwriter: Paolo Sorrentino, Umberto Contarello Cast: Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferrili, Carlo Buccirosso, Iaia Forte, Pamela Villoresi, Galatea Ranzi with Massimo de Francovich, Roberto Herlitzka, and with Isabella Ferrari Festivals: Cannes (Competition) 2013, Toronto 2013, AFI 2013, Italy’s Official Entry to the 2014 Academy Awards Awards: 4 European Film Award nominations (Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor and winner for Best Editing), Best Foreign Film nominee for British In- dependent Film Awards

Journalist Jep Gambardella (the dazzling Toni Servillo, Il Divo and Go- Morrah) has charmed and seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades. Since the legendary success of his one and only novel, he has been a permanent fixture in the city's literary and social circles, but when his sixty-fifth birthday coincides with a shock from the past, Jep finds himself unexpectedly taking stock of his life, turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries, and looking past the extravagant nightclubs, parties, and cafés to find Rome in all its glory: a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.

Honey (Miele)

Release Date: March 7, 2014 Director: Valeria Golino Producer: Viola Prestieri, Riccardo Scamarcio, Anne-Dominique Toussaint, Raphael Berdugo Screenplay: Valeria Golino, Valia Santella, Francesca Marciano, from the novel by Angela Del Fabbro with the same title Cast: Jasmine Trinca, Carlo Cecchi, Libero De Rienzo, Vinicio Marchioni, Iaia Forte, Roberto De Francesco, Barbara Ronchi, Claudio Guain, Teresa Acerbis, Valeria Bilello, Massimiliano Iacolucci Festivals: Cannes (Un Certain Regard) 2013, Toronto 2013 Prizes: Winner Special Mention from the Ecumenical Jury, Cannes 2013 Nominated for European Discovery at the European Film Awards 2013

Actress Valeria Golino makes her directing debut with Honey. Irene lives alone on the coastline outside Rome. To her father and her married lover, she’s a student. In reality, she often travels to Mexico where she can legally buy a powerful barbiturate. Working under the name of Miele ("Honey"), her clandestine job is to help terminally-ill people to die with dignity by giving them the drug. One day she supplies a new “client” with a fatal dose, only to find out he’s perfectly healthy but tired of life. Irene is determined not to be responsible for his suicide. From this point on, Irene and Grimaldi are unwill- ingly locked in an intense and moving relationship which will change Irene’s life forever.

L’Intrepido

Release Date - To Be Confirmed Director: Gianni Amelio Producer: Carlo Degli Esposti Screenplay: Gianni Amelio, Davide Lantieri Cast: Antonio Albanese, Sandra Ceccarelli, Livia Rossi, Gabriele Rendina, Alfonso Santagata

Festivals: Venice 2013, Toronto 2013

Set in modern day Milan, this is a Chaplinesque odyssey through the world of work – every type of work, but primarily unskilled manual labor – seen through the eyes of a kind, middle-aged man who takes on every conceivable temporary job in order to be useful and have self respect. This really is a por- trait of the highs and lows of modern life. At its heart is a sympathetic man (Antonio Albanese) who, despite loneliness and personal family problems, es- pecially around his gifted but troubled musician son, remains defiantly opti- mistic even when terrible things happen to him and the people he meets.

Me And You (Io E Te)

Release Date: To Be Confirmed

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci Screenplay: Bernardo Bertolucci, Niccolo Ammaniti, Umberto Contarello Producer: Mario Gianani Cast: Tea Falco, Jacopo Olmo Antinori Festivals: Cannes, Toronto

Lorenzo, a solitary 14-year-old with difficulties relating to his daily life and the world around him, chooses to spend a week hidden in the basement of his house. But Lorenzo’s fragile and rebellious stepsister, Olivia, appears at her brother’s place of refuge and disturbs the quiet.

★★☆☆☆ Italian-Greek actress Valeria Golino - perhaps most familiar to international audiences as Tom Cruise's girlfriend in Rain Man - makes her directorial debut in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes with Miele (2013). Irene (Jasmine Trinca) lives a double life. To her father and her boyfriend she 's a university student, endlessly working on her thesis with a professor in Padua. However, she also has another mobile phone and another name - Miele or 'honey'. She flies to the United States and then enters Mexico by bus. With her short punkish haircut she looks like Anne Parillaud from Luc Besson's Nikita. Could she be a hitwoman?

It turns out that Irene/Miele has been helping terminally ill people end their lives, painlessly and with dignity. The topic of euthanasia has been a recurring one in Italy, with Marco Bellocchio's Dormant Beauty (2012) covering the infamous Eluana Englaro case...

• Antonio Capuano is one of those filmmakers whose pride and love for his home, for his city, for his Napoli, is overwhelming. His inspiration is the contemporary world that surrounds him and he turns that world into cinematic Art. He strives to tell the stories he wants to tell, they way he wants to tell them. Antonio Capuano is building a strong foundation for a body of work that will surely be remembered. The Department of Film and Mediaâ€.s annual collaboration with N.I.C.E. (New Italian Cinema Events) features emerging directors whose innovative work is deserving of international recognition. Antonio Capuano, this yearâ€.s artist in focus, is a well-known theater and television director, a painter and set designer, and a filmmaker. Capturing the maverick spirit flourishing in Naples today, the director is celebrated for his honest depiction of troubled teenagers and his ability to translate

...

Spanning several centuries and even more languages, "The Red Violin" is an artfully composed, intriguingly rendered tale about a particularly soulful musical instrument and its profound effect on the lives of those who cross its predestined path.

Directed by Francois Girard and written by Girard and Don McKellar, who collaborated on 1994's equally inspired "32 Short Films About Glenn Gould," the understated epic, with its intricately interwoven story line, casts quite a beguiling spell.

The Canadian-Italian co-production should score some impressive art house numbers for Lions Gate.

Using a contemporary auction as its framing device, the film nimbly moves back and forth in time, charting the course of a priceless violin with an odd reddish hue.

Created by 17th century master violin maker Nicolo Bussotti (Carlo Cecchi) as a gift for his soon-to-be-born son, the instrument becomes inextricably linked to the predictions of a tarot card reader (Anita Laurenzi) after Bussotti's wife Anna (Irene Grazioli) and the baby both die in childbirth.

Resurfacing in an Austrian monastery circa 1792, the red violin falls into the hands of 6-year-old orphan Kasper Weiss (Christoph Koncz), a child prodigy with a weak heart. It later becomes the passed-around property of nomadic gypsies, ultimately finding its way to England in 1893, where it captures the attention of the roguish Frederick Pope (Jason Flemyng), a Byronic musician with a Mick Jagger swagger whose steamy affair with romance novelist Victoria Byrd (Greta Scacchi) will come to a torrid end.

Looking slightly worse for wear, the violin turns up in 20th century Shanghai, languishing in a pawn shop until it's purchased for a little girl who grows up to be Xiang Pei (Sylvia Chang), a party official of the Chinese Cultural Revolution who is forced to hide the offensive Western instrument of corruption.

From China, the story shifts back to its starting point in Montreal, where the violin is among a collection of musical treasures being sold for Chinese authorities by a Canadian auction house.

Dispatched to the auction, New York-based expert Charles Morritz (Samuel L. Jackson) is intrigued by the instrument's unusual coloring and becomes the latest and most likely the last person whose life will be changed by its presence.

Unafraid to blend in a little bit of Poe with the poetry, Girard and McKellar have assembled a rich storytelling tapestry. As each of the fortune teller's five tarot card readings propel the violin further into the future, Morritz's scientific research methodically peels back the layers of its tumultuous past.

While the film seems to fall just short of achieving an emotionally satisfying sweep -- there's a prevailing austerity that has a distancing effect on the material -- and the tone-shifting English episode feels a little out of place, there is much to be admired here.

Chang and Jackson are among the highlights of the very capable international cast, while behind-the-scenes contributions from cinematographer Alain Dostie, production designer Fran‚ois Seguin and costume designer Renee April are equally dynamic.

John Corigliano's score, meanwhile, creates a fittingly diverse musical landscape for violinist Joshua Bell's timeless, searing solos.

THE RED VIOLIN

Lions Gate Releasing

Director:Francois Girard

Screenwriters:Don McKellar with Francois Girard

Producer:Niv Fichman

Director of photography:Alain Dostie

Production designer:Francois Seguin

Editor:Gaetan Huot

Costume designer:Renee April

Music:John Corigliano

Casting:Deirdre Bowen

Color/stereo

Cast:

Charles Morritz:Samuel L. Jackson

Auctioneer:Colm Feore

Madame Leroux:Monique Mercure

Xiang Pei:Sylvia Chang

Frederick Pope:Jason Flemyng

Victoria:Greta Scacchi

Nicolo Bussotti:Carlo Cecchi

Anna Bussotti:Irene Grazioli

Cesca:Anita Laurenzi

Georges Poussin:Jean-Luc Bideau

Kaspar Weiss:Christoph Koncz

Running time -- 130 minutes

No MPAA rating...