Movies: Alice Rohrwacher

Just out of jail, crumpled English archaeologist Arthur reconnects with his wayward crew of tombaroli accomplices – a happy-go-lucky collective of itinerant grave-robbers who survive by looting Etruscan tombs and fencing the ancient treasures they di...

Gelsomina’s family works according to some special rules. First of all, Gelsomina, at twelve years of age, is head of the family and her three younger sisters must obey her: sleep when she tells them to and work under her watchful eye. But the world,...

Purehearted teen Lazzaro is content living as a sharecropper in rural Italy, but an unlikely friendship with the marquise’s son will change his world....

In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato ponders: what would happen if one of the prisoners managed to free themselves from their chains and escape from the cave? What if that prisoner were Jay, a little 7-year-old boy?...

During WWII, in the days leading up to Christmas, a woman arrives at an Italian Catholic boarding school for orphaned girls with a large cake and a plea for them to pray for her boyfriend, who is having an affair....

After growing up in Switzerland, 13-year-old Marta returns to a city in southern Italy with her mother and older sister. Independent and inquisitive, she joins a catechism class at a local church. However, the games and religious pop songs she encoun...

In the absence of any physical connection, this short explores alternative forms of contact among neighbors by making use of an old 16mm camera, a zoom lens, and a few meters of expired film....

In 1982, Wim Wenders asked 16 of his fellow directors to speak on the future of cinema, resulting in the film Room 666. Now, 40 years later, in Cannes, director Lubna Playoust asks Wim Wenders himself and a new generation of filmmakers (James Gray, R...

A farming community gathers on a plateau on the border of three regions for the funeral of traditional agriculture. It’s a film to ward off the disappearance of a millenary culture....

A portrait of Italy observed through the eyes of teenagers who talk about the places they live in and imagine themselves, torn between the opportunities that surround them, the dream of what they want to become, the fear of failing, the trials they h...

As if in a dream, a young girl recounts the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and the questions raised by the myth. Heartsick from suffering, Orpheus descends into the Underworld to bring his beloved Eurydice who has just died from a snake bite back. The...

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This documentary portrait of a traveling circus family—populated with performing kids, dogs, and chickens—seems to situate us squarely in Fellini country. But Giarolo and Alice Rohrwacher are up to something far less obvious, tempering the film’s ant...

The ninth short film of the Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales series reflects Alice Rohrwacher’s attention to the surreal world of ordinariness and exceptions....

The Istituto Luce turned ninety in 2014, its decades-long history intertwined with that of Italy itself, through cinema and that unique treasure trove of images known to all as the Luce Archives. To celebrate its anniversary, some of the most acclaim...

A transfixing, rarely-seen 16mm miniature made as part of Rohrwacher's opera production of La traviata in 2016....

Shot on 16 mm film, this trailer for Viennale 2020 plays with the mystery of creation and the magic of light and shadow from which cinema is born. It's an invocation to the return to innocence, which is the prerequisite for every new discovery, the d...

Book translators, as director Pier Paolo Giarolo observes, have a lot in common with musicians and bakers: “[They] have to master not only a language but what’s behind it: an entire culture and an idea of the world.” Alice Rohrwacher performs a simil...

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From a Calabrian river to a night in Catania where stray dogs roam the city aimlessly: between these two extremes "full of emptiness" is built Checosamanca , a collective work, born with the intention of talking about the present, preferring the acti...