Acclaimed Italian auteur Nanni Moretti returns to brilliant form with his semi-autobiographical and award-winning new film, MIA MADRE, with Margherita Buy starring as a director struggling to balance life and art.
Margherita (Buy) is directing a new social drama, set against the backdrop of an industrial dispute. Try as she may to remain professional, the emotional turmoil of her private life is taking a toll: an affair with one of her actors has come to an end, her adolescent daughter is failing Latin, but most troubling is the recent hospitalization of her formidable, beloved mother. Whilst her brother Giovanni gradually allows himself to be engulfed by his mother’s last days, taking extended leave to prolong his bedside vigil, Margherita’s tough schedule makes more than a daily visit tricky.
Meanwhile, the famous American actor Barry Huggins (the fabulous John Turturro) has arrived, a needy and capricious personality whose brash presence on set sees things go from bad to worse, and whose general ineptitude might finally push Margherita over the edge.
With characteristic openness to life’s big questions, Moretti’s mature and hugely entertaining film skillfully manoeuvres between pathos and comedy as it considers the uneasy relationship between artistic ambition and everyday life, the real and the imagined. Widely acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival as Moretti’s best film since the Palme d’Or winning, The Son’s Room, and named best film of the year by the influential Cahiers du Cinema, MIA MADRE is another rich and affectingly humanist work from one of world cinema’s true masters.
“Warm, witty and seductive – tremendously smart and enjoyable. Moretti’s best film in years, Mia Madreis about the paramount importance of enjoying life and cultivating love; cinema and socially engaged art are valuable insofar as they promote these imperatives. There is a bit of Fellini’s 8½ and Truffaut’s Day For Night here, but it’s unmistakably a Moretti picture: sad, funny and very satisfying.” – The Guardian ★★★★
“Inspired. A triumph of tonal complexity. Whenever it gets close to the serious, it gets funny. Even funny, it never quite relinquishes the poignant.” – The Financial Times ★★★★★
Italy, 2015 | Language: Italian | 105 minutes | Cert: TBC
Director: Nanni Moretti
Starring: Margherita Buy, John Turturro, Giulia Lazzarni
