12th Italian Film Festival

8th - 28th April 

Supported by the Italian Institutes in both Edinburgh and London and now in its 12th year, the Italian Film Festival will be based, as usual, at the Edinburgh Filmhouse, the Glasgow Film Theatre and the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. But this year, it will also call in at venues in Aberdeen, Dundee, Stirling, London and Manchester.

With the eyes of the world currently on the Eternal City, it's rather apt that the festival pays cinematic tribute to Rome and its peerless history, glorious architecture and indefatigable people. Each film presents a distinctive facet of Roman life, although state persecution features in those at either end of the chronological scale, with Emil Jannings and the sadly forgotten British silent star Lilian Hall Davis starring in Jacoby and Gabrielino D'Annunzio's 1924 adaptation of Henryk Sienkiewicz's account of Nero's crusade against the early Christians, Quo Vadis, and Ursula Andress playing a government assassin hunting down Marcello Mastroianni in Elio Petri's futuristic cull chiller, The Tenth Victim (1965).

The seedy side of Roman life is explored in Luigi Zampa's Angelina (1947), in which a voluble Anna Magnani takes her protest against prejudicial speculators to the capital, while a trio of ne'er-do-wells prowl the streets exploiting any means of making a fast lira in Mauro Bolognini's La Notte Brava (1959), which was adapted by Pier Paolo Pasolini from his own novel, Ragazza di Vita. Incidentally, the site of Pasolini's 1975 murder is visited by Nanni Moretti in his semi-autobiographical tour of the city, Dear Diary (1994).

The mood is somewhat lighter in Dino Risi's charming Poor But Beautiful (1956), in which Piazza Navona nobodies Maurizio Arena and Renato Salvatore find themselves in love with the same girl, Marisa Allasio. Three's also a crowd in Federico Fellini's solo debut, The White Sheik (1951), as honeymooner Brunella Bova is much more interested in comic-strip hero Alberto Sordi than new husband, Leopoldo Trieste (who finds solace in prostitute Giulietta Masina, a situation that Fellini would later expand into Nights of Cabiria). The shooting of another Fellini masterpiece, La Dolce Vita, is recalled in Ettore Scola's hymn to neo-realism, We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974), in which struggling actress Stefania Sandrelli commands the devotion over three decades of Nino Manfredi, Vittorio Gassman and Aldo Fabrizi. Sandrelli also features in Scola's latest release, People Of Rome (2003), which assesses the city's changing social, cultural and political make-up.

The remainder of this excellent programme comprises the best of recent Italian cinema, with many titles showing in this country for the first time. Acclimatising to momentous change is one of the main themes.

In Paolo Virzi's Caterina in the City, Alice Teghill's struggle to come to terms with life in Rome after moving from the small town of Montalto di Castro is not helped by the increasingly eccentric behaviour of her academic father, Sergio Castellito. Similarly, Genoa bookshop owner Licia Maglietta is disconcerted by the discovery that her yuppie architect brother Giuseppe Battiston was adopted from a peasant family in Silvio Soldini's domestic comedy of manners, Agata And The Storm. Vincenzo Pacilli stars as a Neapolitan blacksmith, whose fortunes are transformed by the death of his father in Vincenzo Marra's Earth Wind, while middle-aged divorcee Giancarlo Giannini is affected by childhood memories as he returns to sell the family's Tuscan villa in Enrico Oldoini's 13 At The Table. Domenico Balsamo plays another returning prodigal in Francesco Patierno's Pater Familias, in which the reasons for his decade in jail become apparent through a series of intricate flashbacks.

Sergio Rubini directs himself as an actor reconsidering his life after he is struck down by a mysterious illness in Love Returns. But he cuts a very different figure in Alessandro Piva's odd couple comedy, My Brother-in-Law, as a shady stranger helping Luigi Lo Cascio track down his car stolen during a family baptism. Another seemingly chance encounter brings a security guard in the Turin Museum of Cinema into the orbit of a petty crook and his beguiling girlfriend in Davide Ferrario's After Midnight (pictured), while an 11-year-old orphan is torn between caring for his bedridden grandmother and hanging with his pals at a seedy pool hall in Andrea and Antonio Frazzi's A Children's Story, which has been dubbed 'a Neapolitan City Of God'. An Albanian refugee is also lured deeper into a life of crime after he abandons a people trafficking operation for an even more exploitative prostitution ring in Francesco Munzi's Saimir. But redemption is at hand for a couple of 70s slackers in the working-class outskirts of Bologna, who find a new purpose in working for a radical radio station, in Guido Chiesa's Radio Alice.

Completing the programme are three very different pictures - Matteo Garrone's First Love, a chilling study of anorexia, featuring a harrowing performance from stage star, Michela Cescon; Enzo Monteleone's El Alamein, which recalls the contribution made by the `abandoned' Pavia Division to the pivotal battle in the Western Desert; and Cesar Augusto Meneghetti and Elizabetta Pandimiglio's Soccer Dreams, a documentary about 23 South American hopefuls arriving in Italy intent on making the most of their family origins and finding a club in Serie A.

Accompanying the festival is Rome - The Eternal Film, an exhibition of costumes and photographs from some of the city's best-loved movies. Currently at the Italian Cultural Institute in London (12th-20th April), it will move to the Edinburgh site (26th May - 14th June).

Courtsey of BBC Website