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Two Brazilian films with a successful career on the international festival circuit shared the main prize at the 26th edition of Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival (Festival do Rio) on Sunday night (October 13).

In a tie, Marcelo Caetano’s Baby and Pedro Freire’s Malu have won the best fiction feature award from Premiere Brazil, the main competition section which screened more than 50 local films this year.

In addition to the biggest prize, Baby won in two more categories at the Redentor awards ceremony at the historic Cine Odeon Cclsr in downtown Rio de Janeiro. The queer drama about...

Josh O’Connor stars a grief-stricken graverobber in Alice Rohrwacher’s gorgeous new film. Here’s our La Chimera review.

Italian director Alice Rohrwacher is a master of combining almost supernatural elements with the mundane. Her 2018 feature Happy As Lazzarro was an ambitious, spellbinding exploration of friendships and modern life. Rohrwacher’s latest film, La Chimera, once again combines magical realism and the humdrum with thrilling, if sometimes inaccessible results.

The film opens with a woman, as dreamt by Josh O’Connor’s grumbly archaeologist-turned-grave robber Arthur. Arthur is a man of few words, mourning the loss of his beloved Beniamina (Yile Vianello). We’re not privy to what exactly happened to Beniamina, but we’re acutely aware of Arthur’s bereavement.

Arthur has a bizarre talent of being able to locate buried treasure. He and his friends then sell the artefacts and reap short-lived benefits. One day, Arthur meets Italia...

Soil gently brushed off an ancient piece of pottery, paint peeling from a villa wall, a hand stroking the white, marble face of a statue unseen for thousands of years: La Chimera is a tactile film that shows history as something that can be felt emotionally, as well as touched. Writer and director Alice Rohrwacher melds mischief, myth and melancholy in this playful and quietly bewitching contemporary folk tale that is light on plot but infused with wonder.

We meet raffish but haunted archaeologist Arthur (an exquisite Josh O’Connor) fitfully asleep on a train trundling through the wintry Italian countryside. Looking like a grubby ghost in his dirty white-linen suit, he’s fresh out of the slammer and mourning the death of his beloved Beniamina (Yile Vianello). Once he arrives in a hilltop town, he quickly reunites with a haphazard, merry band of grave-robbing rogues who need his strange power...

Like so many daughters throughout history, especially the ones that still live at home, Malu Rocha (Yara de Novaes) exists in a state of constant rebellion against her mother. A volatile, weed-loving, Rio-born actress who dreams of turning the family house into a community theater for the kids who live in the local favela, Malu relishes every opportunity to cause a scene in her own living room, even — or especially — if that opportunity comes at the expense of good taste.

When she comes home one day to find her mom, Lili (Juliana Carneiro da Cunha), sharing a cup of tea with a mild-mannered priest, Malu begins lecturing the guest about how Jesus Christ was a communist who “started a religion full of pedophiles.” Lili tries to excuse this behavior by insisting that her daughter is a drug addict, but that isn’t enough to stop the priest from making a hasty exit stage right.

La Chimera is a movie directed by Alice Rohrwacher starring Josh O’Connor. With Carol Duarte, Vincenzo Nemolato and Isabella Rossellini.

La chimera

“La Chimera” is one of those movies that, right from the start, is special and beloved for being so: it’s eccentric, poetic, and a full-on tribute to Italian cinema and Italy itself, along with its rich history.

Its premise is simple, yet complex: a gang of antique and tomb thieves. Meanwhile, our protagonist is in search of his “chimera”, something deep within, something we strive to do, seek without knowing we’re seeking, and in the process, makes us human.

Here’s a heads up: it has traveled half of Europe and part of North America, basking in praise for its poetry and lyricism, and its director is already a phenomenon among newer directors.

Indeed, Alice Rohrwacher has become a shining star of European cinema in recent years.

Chicago – One of the heralded auteur filmmakers of the recent decade is Alice Rohrwacher. The Italian director joins her cinema forebears like Pier Paolo Pasolini and Federico Fellini, both of which she’s been favorable compared to, in creating unique and personal stories that resonant beyond their narrative. Her latest, opening at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre on April 5th, is “La Chimera.”

Rating: 5.0/5.0

Based on her memories as a child of Italy, the term “La Chimera” represents a pursuit that individuals have in the back of their minds and their lives that they somehow find elusive. Rohrwacher puts this in the context of a petty thief and English-speaking expatriate named Arthur (Josh O’Connor), out of jail but reverting back to his skill as a tomb raider for ancient Estrucian artifacts … in the 1980s this was a mania in Italy. His gang is looking for a quick score, but he...

In Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera, the Italian writer-director’s fourth narrative feature film, the past melds with the present. Art is something to be dug up, to be discovered, regardless of its origins. A circus troupe does the digging, led by a quiet, discomforted British man named Arthur (Josh O’Connor), clad in his version of very penetrable armor, an all-white, stained suit. Arthur drifts back into town after a stint in prison, revisiting the home of his love, Beniamina (Yile Yara Vianello), who’s ever-present despite her lack of tangibility.

The art Arthur finds, via magic that has become a throughline in Rohrwacher’s work, fills him with despair and almost-bare riches. Who deserves to see the art buried with the dead? Rohrwacher meditates on Arthur and his troupe’s way of life, on the grasping at something physical, grasping at something to desperately hold onto. La Chimera can slip through one’s fingers.

Isabella Rossellini returns to her Italian roots in Alice Rohrwacher's entrancing La Chimera, a film that defies simple categorization with amazing cinematography and complex emotional themes. It follows Arthur (Josh O'Connor), a distraught British archaeologist on a search for his lost love, Beniamina (Yile Vianello), as he loots Etruscan tombs in '80s Tuscany with a band of grave robbers, the tombaroli. Rossellini co-stars as Signora Flora, a wheelchair-using music teacher and Beniamina's mother, who adores Arthur despite his profession.

Rossellini calls Rohrwacher "a major talent. This is only her fourth film, but she is a force. She has a completely original voice. She tells stories that haven't been told before." This is high praise from such a vaunted actress, director, and scion of cinema royalty. Rossellini, the daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, shot to fame in David Lynch's classics Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart.

Legend has it that if you were to stroll around Riparbella, a small Italian village in the rural part of Tuscany, you would come across a number of tombs. Some were hidden, some were open, and many of these underground burial sites were more than 2000 years old, filled with ancient artifacts. For centuries, they were left undisturbed, as a sign of respect for the dead. Then, in the early 1980s, grave robbers known as tombaroli would ransack these sacred spaces and sell the stolen goods on the black market, which...

Liam Neeson crime thriller In the Land of Saints and Sinners opens on 896 screens this weekend, joined by Sean Penn in Asphalt City — the Godzilla vs. Kong of the specialty market?

Neeson reunites with The Marksman director Robert Lorenz as a newly retired assassin in a remote Irish village who finds himself drawn into a lethal game of cat and mouse with a trio of vengeful terrorists. Ciarán Hinds, Kerry Condon, Colm Meaney and Jack Gleeson also star in Land of Saints and Sinners, which premiered at Venice, and was shot in County Donegal, Ireland. Screenplay by Mark Michael McNally and Terry Loane. Samuel Goldwyn Films’ widest release post-pandemic sits at 80% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

Penn stars with Tye Sheridan in Asphalt City, Vertical’s co-release with Roadside Attractions that opens on 297 screens, also with a national footprint. Young paramedic Ollie Cross (Sheridan) is paired with seasoned partner Gene...

La Chimera tells the entrancing story of Arthur (Josh O'Connor), a wounded British archaeologist who loots Etruscan graves with the tombaroli (or tomb robbers) in a desperate search to find his lost love, Beniamina (Yile Vianello), in '80s Tuscany. The film co-stars Isabella Rossellini as Signora Flora, Beniamina's wheelchair-using mother, and Carol Duarte as Italia, her vocal student hiding a big secret.

Writer/director Alice Rohrwacher continues to astound with another brilliantly creative idea that defies simple categorization. She says, "The idea of working with the world of the tombaroli was something that I have been playing with for a long time. All the men and boys in my little town would go out at night and search for these treasures to sell them. I often wondered where they found the courage, not so much to go against the law of the living, but to go against the law of the dead.

La Chimera presents a complex story centered on Arthur, an archaeologist with a deep connection to the past and a struggle to embrace the present. The film explores themes of our relationship with the past, supernatural elements, and the blurred lines between reality, myth, and dreams. La Chimera challenges viewers to consider the impact of living in the past or present, capturing the essence of longing for an ideal life that may be out of reach.

Writing about La Chimera in the concise, linear format of a review is a real challenge for me. Not because it's especially opaque or impenetrable; on the contrary, it makes for quite welcoming viewing. But the new Italian movie from writer-director Alice Rohrwacher is alive in the way great art can sometimes be. Its ideas are many, and its way of exploring them encourages an open, active mind. Trying to lock it into the rigid language of description,...

In ancient times, the Etruscan civilization built elaborate underground tombs not to please human eyes but those of the spirit world. A similar spirit of feeling unbound from the pressures of the present-day animates Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera, a 1980s-set adventure following a roving group of tomb raiders who attempt to excavate and pillage these secret sanctuaries. The director has always depicted time as layered rather than strictly linear. The present exists not ahead the past but on top of it, and the moments she depicts will one day be history for another era. This vision lends the sensation that she, like the ancient culture she depicts, is communicating with something beyond our perception.

Rohrwacher finds a perfect partner in her search for the sublime with Josh O’Connor. The English actor provides a human incarnation of the director’s restless attempt to collapse the contradictions of time.

Italian auteur Alice Rohrwacher explores death and lost love in a beguiling period setting with stunning cinematography. La Chimera refers to the search for something you're destined to never find. Her protagonist, an angry and perpetually haunted British archaeologist, robs ancient tombs with a merry band of oddball thieves. But their larcenous goals of quick riches hide his quest for something less tangible yet equally rewarding. La Chimera captivates despite ponderous lulls and admittedly lethargic pacing. It straddles a creative line between realism and fantasy with a lingering sense of the extraordinary.

Set in '80s Tuscany, inquisitive teenage girls playfully rib a disheveled man trying to sleep in their train car. Arthur (Josh O'Connor) accepts their mocking while daydreaming about his beloved Beniamina (Yile Vianello). The laughter ends when a sock vendor unleashes Arthur's bottled wrath. The explosive outburst causes everyone to flee. He trudges off the train and ignores a waiting car.

Josh O’Connor and Carol Durate Photo: Neon The past is so close you can almost touch it in Alice Rohrwacher’s romantic treasure hunt, La Chimera. Set in the liminal space between living and dying, better known as the Italian countryside, Rohwacher’s carefully excavated narrative unearths a funny and...

Gian Piero Capretto, Ramona Fiorini, Melochiorre Pala, Josh O’Connor, Luca Gargiullo, Vincenzo Nemolato, and Lou Roy LecollinetPhoto: Neon

The past is so close you can almost touch it in Alice Rohrwacher’s romantic treasure hunt, La Chimera. Set in the liminal space between living and dying, better known as the Italian countryside,...

Stars: Josh O’Connor, Carol Duarte, Vincenzo Nemolato, Alba Rohrwacher, Isabelle Rossellini, Lou Roy-Lecollinet | Written and Directed by Alice Rohrwacher

Fresh out of jail, Arthur (Josh O’Connor) is a man who seems reluctant to head back to his past, although haunted by his lost love Beniamina. Meeting back up with his rag-tag bunch of friends, Arthur succumbs to the means of living he loves the most — stealing Etruscan artifacts from local graves. Sinking deeper and deeper into his work, Arthur’s quest to find a door to the afterlife becomes overwhelming.

2020s cinema has, so far, been a time of reminiscence. As a collective, we’ve been harking for the 1980s in particular, longing for its synth-based tunes, garish colours, and a future that felt as though anything could happen next. Typically, this manifests in something that looks of its time but clearly is made in the modern day. Instead of a synthetic homage,...

"You've cast a spell." One of the best films from 2023! Neon has finally unveiled the official US trailer for the Italian film La Chimera, the latest from acclaimed Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher. This first premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival last year, where I first fell in love with it, before going on to play at the Telluride, Toronto, Zurich, and New York Film Festivals. Josh O'Connor stars as Arthur, one of the key members of a band of black market bandits (known as the "Tombaroli") who dig up archeological artifacts hidden in tombs around Italy and sell them to a collector. The cast also features Isabella Rossellini, Carol Duarte, Alba Rohrwacher, Vincenzo Nemolato, and Lou Roy-Lecollinet. I Adore this film and everything in it – I went to see it three times at three different festivals last year. It ended up as my #1 film of 2023 on my final Top 10 for...

While Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny perhaps garnered more press out of Cannes Film Festival last year, it was another selection involving archaeologists and tomb raiders that will have a longer shelf life. Alice Rohrwacher’s latest feature La Chimera, starring Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Alba Rohrwacher, Carol Duarte, and Vincenzo Nemolato, has now finally been set for a March 29, 2024 release from Neon following a 2023 awards-qualifying run and now the new trailer and poster have arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “Everyone has their own Chimera, something they try to achieve but never manage to find. For the band of tombaroli, thieves of ancient grave goods and archaeological wonders, the Chimera means redemption from work and the dream of easy wealth. For Arthur, the Chimera looks like the woman he lost, Beniamina. To find her, Arthur challenges the invisible, searches everywhere, goes inside the earth – in search of the...

Yara de Novaes as Malu. Pedro Freire:'When we were rehearsing or shooting, many times I was crying. And the actresses were looking at me like, "Wow, he's really moved by that. He's really emotional". And they told me that this was really strong for them - that because they felt that for the director, it became moving to them too.' Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute Pedro Freire's debut, Malu, is about as personal as it can get since it's based on part of the life of his own mother, Malu Rocha, who died in 2013 when he was 32. His family drama explores the tensions between ageing actress Malu (Yara de Novaes), her mother Lily (Juliana Carneiro da Cunha) and Malu's daughter Joana (Carol Duarte), a tempestuous trio, whose anger is often as fierce as their love for one another. We caught up with Freire after the film premiered at...

Smoking weed and telling off Catholic priests are just two of the ways Malu Rocha (Yara de Novaes) asserts her rebellious spirit. The eccentric, indomitable and idiosyncratic actress at that center of Pedro Freire’s feature debut “Malu” is the embodiment of a highly flammable substance. Her volatile personality, capable of consuming everything in her way, ignites a Rio de Janeiro-set intergenerational drama inspired by the life story of the director’s mother.

Malu doesn’t live in the present. Most of the time, she’s either retelling stories from her youth about getting into trouble with the law during the dictatorship years, or else rambling about a hypothetical future. Malu dreams of turning her home into a cultural center where kids from the nearby favela can come for recreational activities and theater productions. But the property needs as many repairs as do her relationships with both her elderly mother...

Berlin-based sales agent Pluto Film has pounced on international sales rights to Brazil’s “Malu,” the only completely non-European production in this year’s Sundance World Cinema Dramatic Competition, inspired by first feature director Pedro Freire’s troubled relationship with his mother Malu Rocha, a Brazilian actor.

“Since we love to work with new voices in global cinema, we were immediately convinced, that ‘Malu’ would fit perfectly to Pluto Film’s line-up,” said Pluto Film’s Benjamin Cölle, its managing director and head of sales.

“The film offers a unique storytelling approach from an up-and-coming director, who tackles complex themes like ambition, family, and survival in a specific cultural context with boldness. The film‘s narrative is rich with interpersonal drama and cultural context and its multi-dimensional characters add depth,” he added.

Freire has taken the personal and structured it around the relationship between three generations of women, the daughter,...

Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera with Alba Rohrwacher is a highlight of the 61st New York Film Festival Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Film at Lincoln Center has announced that Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall; Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone Of Interest; Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days; Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses, and Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves (all Cannes Film Festival award winners) will be among the Main Slate selections of the 61st New York Film Festival. Angela Schanelec’s Music (Berlin International Film Festival Silver Bear for Best Screenplay) and Bas Devos’s Here (Best Film in the Encounters section and the Fipresci prize) are also in.

Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days, starring Kôji Yakusho (Cannes Best Actor), is another highlight Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer; Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera; Marco Bellocchio’s Kidnapped; Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Pictures Of Ghosts; Andrew Haigh...

When asked, in 2019, to explain why her first three features begin during the night, Alice Rohrwacher recalled the long drives she would take with her beekeeping father as a child and how, upon arrival, she’d play a game by closing her eyes: “I’d have to work it out from what I could hear, not from what I could see, so I’d listen to the place and the information would enter my mind––and then I’d open my eyes.” More than most filmmakers, Rohrwacher’s particular genius seems tied to her way of thinking: that cinema is less a reflection of our imagination than a natural extension. The best ideas in her cinema seem plucked from nowhere (Lazzaro‘s time jump; the red cake in Le Pupille), yet arrive fully formed––even organic.

Premiering on the final day of Cannes, her new film doesn’t begin at...

Alice Rohrwacher’s “La Chimera,” in which “The Crown” star Josh O’Connor plays a British archeologist named Arthur who gets involved in an international network of stolen Etruscan artifacts during the 1980s, has sold worldwide after premiering positively in Cannes.

The Match Factory has inked deals for the film in the U.K. and Ireland (Curzon); Australia and New Zealand (Palace Entertainement); Benelux (September Film); Germany (Piffl Medien); Hong Kong (Edko); Spain (Elastica); South Korea (M&m International); China (Jetsen); Japan (Bitters End); Taiwan (Swallow Wings); Austria (Stadtkino); Baltics (A-One); Bulgaria (Art Fest); Cis (Mauris Film); Czech Republic & Slovakia (Aerofilms); Finland (B-Plan Distribution); Denmark (Filmbazar); Former Yugoslavia (McF): Greece (Cinobo); Hungary (Cirko); Middle East and North Africa (Moving Turtle); Poland (Aurora Films); Portugal (Midas); Romania (Independenta); Singapore (Anticipate Pictures); Thailand (Documentary Club); and Ukraine (Arthouse Traffic).

As previously announced, North American rights were sold while the film was in production to Neon.

Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher’s latest pic La Chimera has inked a series of international deals for The Match Factory following its well-received debut at last month’s Cannes Film Festival.

Starring an ensemble including Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, and Alba Rohrwacher the pic has sold in the UK and Ireland (Curzon), Australia and New Zealand (Palace Entertainment), Benelux (September Film), Germany (Piffl Medien), Hong Kong (Edko), Spain (Elastica), South Korea (M&m International), China (Jetsen), Japan (Bitters End), and Taiwan (Swallow Wings).

Palme d’Or juggernaut Neon has already taken North American rights. Ad Vitam is a co-producer and distributor in France, while Filmcoopi will be releasing the feature in Switzerland and 01 Distribution in Italy.

Further deals reported today are Austria (Stadtkino), Baltics (A-One), Bulgaria (Art Fest), Cis (Mauris Film), Czech Republic & Slovakia (Aerofilms), Finland (B-Film), Denmark (Filmbazar), Former Yugoslavia (McF), Greece (Cinobo), Hungary (Cirko), Middle East and North...

The Match Factory announces key sales for tomb robber drama.

The Match Factory has agreed multiple sales for Alice Rohrwacher’s Cannes Competition film La Chimera.

The tomb robber drama starring Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Alba Rohrwacher and Carol Duarte was well received by critics and ranked in joint fourth place on Screen’s Cannes jury grid.

Neon acquired North America rights for La Chimera last year. Since then The Match Factory has inked deals for the film in the UK and Ireland (Curzon), Australia and New Zealand (Palace Entertainment), Benelux (September Film), Germany (Piffl Medien), Hong Kong (Edko), Spain...

Alice Rohrwacher makes movies like no one else. Her extraordinary work ventures into Italy’s labyrinthine past through fascinating pocket communities, vanishing breeds that seem suspended in time. In The Wonders, it was a family of beekeepers, like the director’s own; in Happy as Lazzaro, it was isolated sharecroppers kept in the feudal dark by exploitative landowners; and in the invigoratingly strange and lyrical La Chimera, it’s a ragtag band of tombaroli, illegal grave-robbers who dig up Etruscan relics and make their money selling those antiquities on to fences who in turn sell them to museums and collectors for vastly larger sums.

The three films make up an informal trilogy — set in the regions of Tuscany and Umbria where Rohrwacher was born and grew up — about the delicate thread between life and death, present and past. The latter remains very much alive almost everywhere you look in Italy,...

In “La Chimera,” the ancient past nestles mere inches below the surface of the present, eventually breaking above ground and disrupting, if not the space-time continuum, the more mundane order of things. The borders between life and death feel similarly frictious and permeable, as if we could merely visit one from the other, as easily as sleeping and waking. Arthur (Josh O’Connor), the wandering Brit at the center of Alice Rohrwacher’s marvelously supple and sinuous new film, is accustomed to such limbo states. So are admirers of Rohrwacher’s filmmaking, which, in this eccentric, romantic tale of competing grave-robbers in Central Italy, touches the transcendental without diving into the outright fabulism of 2018’s “Happy as Lazzaro.”

Grounding the feyer impulses of “La Chimera” — a return for Rohrwacher to more metaphysical musings after the simpler charms of her Oscar-nominated short “Le Pupille” — is, well, the literal ground: grubby and gritty and,...

A Chimera is something one tries to achieve but alas, never manages to find. It is the heart and soul of a quest in life, in different ways, for the cast of characters in writer/director Alice Rohrwacher’s beautiful new film La Chimera premiering today as one of the last entries in competition at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. It also happens to be one of the best.

Rohrwacher, who has won prizes at Cannes for two previous films, 2014’s The Wonders (Grand Prix) and 2018’s Happy As Lazaro (Screenplay) and was nominated for an Oscar this year for her live action short Le Pupille,, is back with what I think is her best film yet, an adventure, an ethereal and spiritual journey, a love story even on different levels, and a heist movie like no other. The latter refers to the center of action here as it is set...

Editor’s Note: This review originally published during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Neon will release “La Chimera” in theaters March 29, 2024.

Just when it seemed like Cannes couldn’t get any worse for “Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny,” it turns out that James Mangold’s $300 million sequel wasn’t even the festival’s best movie about a sad and grumpy archeologist who chases a band of tomb raiders across the waters of Italy in order to stop them from selfishly exploiting a priceless artifact from before the birth of Christ. What are the odds?

Strange as that coincidence might be, it’s no surprise that Alice Rohrwacher’s new film is better than a Disney blockbuster that happens to share the same general milieu, but it’s worth pointing out that the arthouse version of this story is far more entertaining than the studio blockbuster take. It’s also...

Hidden cinematic treasures are buried everywhere in Cannes. But even the most tireless hunters and diggers amongst us couldn’t have predicted that this year’s finest archeology film would not be found in James Mangold’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” but in Alice Rohrwacher’s whimsically ethereal tapestry of romance, history and afterlife, “La Chimera.”

A rich and humorous folk tale overflowing with cultural details, aesthetic pleasures and the effervescent musicality of the Italian language, Rohrwacher’s melancholically grainy pastoral fable isn’t exactly about professional archeology, to be perfectly clear. But what some of her characters—the ancient-grave-raiding collective “tombaroli,” led by Josh O’Connor’s (“The Crown”) enigmatic Arthur—lack in bona fide archeological expertise, they make up for with rebellion and a reckless sense of aspiration.

Violating the bottomless sacred burial grounds of their little Italian village and stealing historical wonders the Etruscan people have taken to their grave,...

In less than 10 years, Alice Rohrwacher has carved out a formidable reputation for herself, notably by gatecrashing the boys’ club that is traditionally the Cannes competition, and the fact that she did so in 2014 with only her second film, The Wonders, is further proof of a distinctive talent. One competition slot doesn’t guarantee another, yet Rohrwacher was back in 2018 with the follow-up, Happy as Lazzaro. Both films won prizes — Grand Prix and Best Screenplay, respectively — which means that expectations are high for the Oscar-nominated 41-year-old Italian, whose new film, La chimera, makes it three in a row.

Deadline: What can you reveal to us about La chimera?

Alice Rohrwacher: Nothing! [Laughs] It’s very difficult to talk about the film when you have not seen it, but I can tell you that it’s the story of a group of grave robbers. We call them tombaroli in Italy, and...

Alice Rohrwacher is in the Cannes competition for the third time with “La Chimera,” in which “The Crown” star Josh O’Connor plays a young British archeologist named Arthur who gets involved in an international network of stolen Etruscan artifacts during the 1980s.

For Rohrwacher, the film is connected to growing up in Umbria, once the center of the Etruscan civilization. But it’s also the final piece of a triptych on a territory that she started with her previous Cannes entries: “The Wonders” and “Happy as Lazzaro.” Three works that, as she has put it, pose a central question: “What to do with the past?”

Also starring in “La Chimera,” which can be loosely translated as “The Unrealizable Dream,” are Isabella Rossellini as a retired opera singer; Brazil’s Carol Duarte (“The Invisible Life”) as non-Italian woman who intersects with Arthur; Alba Rohrwacher as an international artifacts trafficker; and Vincenzo Nemolato...

The Italian director, who will be in Cannes with ‘La Chimera’ hosted a wide-ranging masterclass at Visions du Reel.

In the final days of the Geneva edit of her fourth fiction feature La Chimera, set for Cannes Competition, Italian director Alice Rohrwacher sat down at Visions du Reel for an expansive look at her career to date.

Her recent filmography includes an Oscar-nominated short film (The Pupils in 2022), a documentary and signing on for two episodes of a large-budget HBO TV show (My Brilliant Friend). They follow the loosely-connected, occasionally-autographical features which have dazzled audiences, from Corpo Celeste to The Wonders and Happy As Lazzaro.

The Italian director, who will be in Cannes with ‘La Chimera’ hosted a wide-ranging masterclass at Visions du Reel.

In the final days of the Geneva edit of her fourth fiction feature La Chimera, set for Cannes Competition, Italian director Alice Rohrwacher sat down at Visions du Reel for an expansive look at her career to date.

Her recent filmography includes an Oscar-nominated short film (The Pupils in 2022), a documentary and signing on for two episodes of a large-budget HBO TV show (My Brilliant Friend). They follow the loosely-connected, occasionally-autographical features which have dazzled audiences, from Corpo Celeste to The Wonders and Happy As Lazzaro.

Neon has landed North American rights at Cannes to La Chimera, the tomb-robbing drama from writer-director Alice Rohrwacher that stars Josh O’Connor and Isabelle Rossellini.

Set during the 1980s in the clandestine world of the tombaroli, or tomb robbers, La Chimera tells the story of a young English archaeologist (O’Connor) caught up in the illegal trafficking of ancient finds. Carol Duarte, Alba Rohrwacher and Vincenzo Nemolato star in the pic, which is production in Tarquinia and southern Tuscany and will continue during the summer in central Italy and Switzerland.

Rohrwacher’s regular collaborator Carlo Cresto-Dina produced La Chimera through his company Tempesta and longtime backers Rai Cinema. It is a co-production with Neon, Amka Films of Switzerland and Ad Vitam Production of France, in partnership with Arte France Cinema, Canal+, Ciné +, Switzerland’s Rsi/Ssr Srg and French distributor Ad Vitam.

Neon’s Jeff Deutchman and Mason Speta negotiated...

Neon has acquired the North American distribution rights to Alice Rohrwacher’s “La Chimera,” starring Josh O’Connor and Isabella Rossellini.

Written and directed by Rohrwacher, the film is set in the 1980s in the clandestine world of the tombaroli (tomb robbers) and tells the story of a young English archaeologist (O’Connor) who gets caught up in the illegal trafficking of ancient finds.

The cast also includes Carol Duarte, Alba Rohrwacher and Vincenzo Nemolato. The film has wrapped phase one of production in Tarquinia and southern Tuscany and will continue in August and September in central Italy and Switzerland.

The film is produced, as all of Rohrwacher’s previous films, by Carlo Cresto-Dina with his company Tempesta and long-time backers Rai Cinema, in co-production with Neon, Amka Films (Switzerland) and Ad Vitam Production (France), and in partnership with Arte France Cinema, Canal+, Ciné+, Rsi/Ssr Srg (Switzerland) and French distributor Ad Vitam.

Neon is continuing its acquisition spree and has acquired the North American distribution rights to “La Chimera,” the next film from Italian auteur Alice Rohrwacher that stars “The Crown” actor Josh O’Connor and Isabella Rossellini.

Written and directed by Rohrwacher, “La Chimera” is set in the 1980s in the clandestine world of the tombaroli, or tomb robbers and tells the story of a young English archaeologist (O’Connor) caught up in the illegal trafficking of ancient finds. Carol Duarte, Alba Rohrwacher and Vincenzo Nemolato also co-star.

Phase one of production on “La Chimera” has already been completed in Tarquinia and Southern Tuscany, and the film will continue shooting across central Italy and Switzerland between August and September.

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Neon Ups Jeff Deutchman to President of Acquisitions and Production

The film is produced, as all of Rohrwacher’s previous films, by Carlo Cresto-Dina with his company tempesta and long-time backers Rai Cinema,...

Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz’s gorgeous new melodrama joins classics that range from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? to You Can Count on Me

There are few more irritatingly prevalent errors in modern screenwriting than on-screen siblings who refer directly to each other as such: “You said it, sis.” “I’m here for you, bro.” Even the best actors can’t sell these terms of address that almost no human being actually uses: any great film about a sibling relationship should be so closely observed that you don’t need any dialogue cues to trace the family tree.

One such film is Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz’s gorgeous melodrama The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão, now streaming on Curzon Home Cinema. Adapted from a popular novel by Martha Batalha, it’s a story of sisterly love enduring across decades of misfortune and forced separation. Close as children, good girl Eurídice...

This gorgeous and moving melodrama finds two women in 1950s Rio under suffocating family expectations – and sees what happens when they are defied

‘What do you want from life?” a husband drunkenly yells at his wife in Karim Aïnouz’s gorgeous and very moving melodrama set in 1950s Rio de Janeiro. The man’s wife is Euridice (Julia Stockler) and what she wants is to be a classical pianist. Her husband is angry and hurt: why can’t she just be happy in the kitchen? Adapted from a novel by Martha Batalha, this is the story of Euridice and her sister Guida (Carol Duarte): their inner conflicts and rebellion against the suffocating patriarchy of home.

The film beings a few years earlier: Euridice is 18 and applying to study music in Vienna. Her heart is broken when boy-mad Guida runs away with a no-good sailor to Greece, promising to write when she is married.

‘Money Heist’ scooped the most awards in the TV categories.

Pedro Almodovar’s Pain And Glory swept the Platino Xcaret Awards for Ibero-American films on June 29 winning six trophies including best Ibero-American film.

Almodovar was also awarded best director and best screenplay while Antonio Banderas - who was Oscar-nominated for his performance and won the actor prize at Cannes - picked up best actor. The film also won best editing for the work of Teresa Font, and best original score, for composer Alberto Iglesias.

The awards were originally meant to take place in Riviera Maya, Mexico, in early May but...

Pedro Almodóvar’s “Pain and Glory” swept the 7th Platino Xcaret Awards, winning best Ibero-American film, as well as the best director and screenplay for Almodovar. It also took home three other awards: Original music for Alberto Iglesias, editing for Teresa Font and best actor for Antonio Banderas, Oscar-nominated for his role in Almodóvar’s semi-autobiographical opus.

Relegated to an online announcement by the Covid-19 pandemic, Ibero-America’s most prestigious awards ceremony unveiled the winners on its YouTube channel on Monday, June 29 where Platinos ambassador and CNN Español journalist Juan Carlos Arciniegas teamed up with Mexican actor-comedian Omar Chaparro and Colombian actress-singer Majida Issa to read out the winners.

Enrique Cerezo, president of the Premios Xcaret, said: “We regret that we couldn’t be present on site because of a nightmare we hope to wake up from soon.”

It was a banner year for Spanish productions which went home with...

Greenery abounds in Brazilian auteur Karim Aïnouz’s affecting and bright-colored sisterhood saga Invisible Life. Based on Martha Batalha’s 2016 novel, it chronicles the forced disconnection between siblings Eurídice (Carol Duarte) and Guida (Julia Stockler), whose hearts break with each passing day apart in 1950s Rio de Janeiro. Victims of a male-dominated society that denies their dreams and ambitions, the sisters embody two sides of the same still resonant struggles women of the time endured. In addition to the striking work of French cinematographer Hélène Louvart, top talent was plentiful across the board. Illustrious producer Rodrigo Teixeira (Call Me By Your […]...

Greenery abounds in Brazilian auteur Karim Aïnouz’s affecting and bright-colored sisterhood saga Invisible Life. Based on Martha Batalha’s 2016 novel, it chronicles the forced disconnection between siblings Eurídice (Carol Duarte) and Guida (Julia Stockler), whose hearts break with each passing day apart in 1950s Rio de Janeiro. Victims of a male-dominated society that denies their dreams and ambitions, the sisters embody two sides of the same still resonant struggles women of the time endured. In addition to the striking work of French cinematographer Hélène Louvart, top talent was plentiful across the board. Illustrious producer Rodrigo Teixeira (Call Me By Your […]...

Karim Aïnouz’s beguilingly stunning “Invisible Life” is Brazil’s latest cinematic treasure. Even as the country’s conservative government threatens to cut the funding to the robust film scene that has given us critically acclaimed works like “Aquarius,” “Neon Bull” and “The Second Mother,” there are works like “Invisible Life” that remind international audiences of the stories the nation is fighting to tell in the face of adversity.

“Invisible Life” is a tale of two sisters in 1950s Rio de Janeiro. Guida (Julia Stockler), the slightly more adventurous one, escapes from a family dinner one night to go out with a mysterious suitor, a Greek sailor. She disappears the next morning, leaving behind only a note and one of her grandmother’s earrings she had left with the night before.

Her sister, Eurídice (Carol Duarte), blames herself for covering for her sister to leave the family without so much as saying goodbye.

As we enter the holidays Lionsgate and Bron Studios are looking to explode with the nationwide release of the Jay Roach-directed Bombshell starring Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie. The Fox News sexual harassment drama had a stellar limited opening last weekend, earning an estimated $312,000, with a per-screen average of $78,000. As it opens today in approximately 1,450 locations in North America, it is sure to put more coins in its piggy bank.

“This is an important, timely and topical film driven by world-class filmmakers and outstanding performances, great word of mouth, and the strong buzz and momentum after the Golden Globe and SAG nominations,” Damon Wolf, President of Worldwide Marketing for the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group told Deadline. “Last week’s sold-out special screenings led to one of the highest-grossing limited release engagements of the year and a 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.”

“Bombshell is the first major movie to explore the #metoo movement,...

by Murtada Elfadl

With a depth of feeling and lush gorgeous colors that knock the wind out of you, Invisible Life is melodrama done right. Set in Rio de Janeiro in 1950 as two inseparable sisters have different dreams. One, Euridice played by Carol Duarte, wants to become a renowned pianist. The romantic Guida (Julia Stockler) yearns for true love. They are separated by their father and forced to live apart. They take control of their separate destinies, while never giving up hope of finding each other. We follow their story with ache in our hearts but with our eyes feasting on the beauty that fills the frame.

We got a chance to speak with director Karim Aïnouz recently in New York. [This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.]

Murtada Elfadl: Congratulations. The film is amazing.

Karim Aïnouz: Thank you. Thank you. That's good to hear

One of the things that I really love about it I grew up on Egyptian movies,...

A fertile time for Brazilian cinema, the country’s Oscar entry this year is Karim Aïnouz’s Invisible Life, which premiered under the title of The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão at Cannes this year, where it won the top prize in its Un Certain Regard section. Starring Carol Duarte, Julia Stockler, and Fernanda Montenegro, the melodrama tells the story of two sisters in Rio de Janeiro in 1950. Picked up by Amazon Studios, the U.S. trailer has now arrived ahead of a release later this month.

Leonardo Goi said in his review, “Karim Aïnouz’s The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão is a tale of resistance. It hones in on two inseparable sisters stranded in–and ultimately pulled apart by–an ossified patriarchal world. It is an engrossing melodrama where melancholia teems with rage, with a tear-jerking finale that feels so devastating because of the staggering mix of love and fury that precedes it.

"I haven't lost hope that you'll return to Brazil..." Amazon has revealed a new Us trailer for the acclaimed drama Invisible Life from Brazil, which is a new shortened title just for Us release - the full title is still The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão. The film won the top Un Certain Regard award at the Cannes Film Festival this year, and is Brazil's submission for the Oscars coming up. This feminist drama set in Rio de Janeiro in the 1950s and the story follows two sisters, Euridice and Guida. They live at home, each with a dream: become a renowned pianist, or find true love. Because of their father, they are forced to live without each other. Separated for most of their lives, they will take control of their destiny, while never giving up on their hope of being reunited. Starring Fernanda Montenegro as Euridice, and Júlia Stockler as Guida,...