Monday 10 June 2024 at 6pm – Italian Institute of Culture, Pavilion Hall
“Respiro” is a 2002 film directed by Emanuele Crialese and starring Valeria Golino.
Synopsis: On Lampedusa, a small island in the Mediterranean Sea, lives a beautiful nymph with hair bleached by the sun and blue-green eyes, like the crystal clear water that surrounds her. She is a pure being, halfway between earth and water. Like a child, she experiences life events intensely, without shame, and without filters. Her name is Grazia. She is married to a fisherman and has three teenage children of whom she appears to be more like a sister than a mother.
The film was nominated for major international film festivals and won the Grand Prix award at Cannes Film Festival in 2002.
It will be screened in Italian with English subtitles and will be preceded by an analysis of its context and the director’s work.
Free admission, booking required on this page or Eventbrite
THE DIRECTOR
Although born in Rome in 1965, Emanuele Crialese has Sicilian roots, to which he pays tribute in film after film. In 1991 he leaves for the USA where he studies film direction at New York University. After making several shorts, he directs his first feature-length movie Once We Were Strangers (1997), in New York. The year was 1997, the film was in English and was awarded several prizes, among which the Valenciennes International Film Festival Award. He then decided to return to his homeland and met international success (both in festivals and art houses) with his first Italian work Respiro (2002), shot on Lampedusa Island in Sicily in 2002, with Vincenzo Amato and Valeria Golino in her most ambitious part to-date. In 2006, his next film Golden Door (2006), once again with Vincenzo Amato, examined the question of emigration to the States at the beginning of the 20th century, more particularly from the perspective of poor Sicilian peasants.
Reservation no longer available
