DIEGO MARADONA

DIEGO MARADONA is the latest doc from Asif Kapadia - the film-maker behind the superb SENNA and AMY.  Once again he uses the same technique - curating a collage of previously unseen video and audio to give an overarching narrative about an icon's inner life.  He doesn't insert himself overtly into the doc in the way that Nick Broomfield or Michael Moore do - but his thesis is very present, conveyed through his editing and shaping of the material. In those prior docs, Kapadia created a villain - Alain Prost and Amy Winehouse's dad. In this one, he creates both hero and villain in Diego and Maradona - the charismatic super-talented slum kid who made good - and the cocky, cocaine-fuelled adulterer who imploded.  It's an effective duality but leaves other factors unexplored. Because Maradona's life - unlike Senna or Amy - allows us a window into two particular social issues which are as fascinating as he is. The first is the racism and classism of Italian society that allows northern football fans to call the Napoli fans black cholera-plagued scum. The second is the influence of the mafia on Napolese life.  These intersect in Maradona, because he was bought for a record sum by Napoli - the poorest club in the poorest town in Italy - bankrolled by the mafia who then courted Diego and gave him cocaine and women. They also intersect because Diego sympathised with Napoli and for a time embodied all its best hopes because he too had been called all the names, treated as scum, and could become their avatar.  I wanted to hear more about these issues and felt that Kapadia was either reluctant or unable to explore them further. And I feel that this is because he was over-concerned with using his treasure trove of unseen Napoli football footage, and remains resistant to using talking heads to provide social context.  The problem with this approach is that for all but the most ardent soccer fan, watching footage of 1980s seria A football isn't that interesting.  And second, that I left the doc wanting more - unsatisfied despite sitting through a 2 hour doc.  That said, it's still a film worth watching for the occasional flashes of Diego's charisma, and the joy of seeing him teach his daughter how to swear at the Juve fans. 

DIEGO MARADONA has a running time of 130 minutes. It played Cannes and Sheffield 2019. It is currently on release in the UK and opens in the USA on September 20th.

THEATRE OF WAR - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Preview

THEATRE OF WAR is an examination of the after effect of the Falklands War on participants from both sides of the conflict. For British viewers such as myself, we remember the war as a very minor conflict in the early 1980s, where a post-coup Argentina invaded islands that had been held by Britain for 150 years.  We were taken by surprise, but dispatched a taskforce, and won them back within 70 days.  Coming at broadly the same time as the wedding of Charles and Diana, and seeing the soaring popularity of the victorious Mrs Thatcher - relieved for a moment from the dire and divisive miners' strike - this period seems to be one of momentary national pride.  The abiding memory is of The Sun's superb headline "Gotcha!" on the sinking of the Argentinean ship The Belgrano. I say superb because it's a piece of superbly memorably copywriting -regardless of the lack of empathy it encapsulates.  It seems to sum up the mood of the time.  

Since then, of course, we have been mired in far more ambiguous and unsuccessful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with far less well delineated moral lines. (I show my colours here - I *do* class the Falklands as having been invaded and rightly defended - a point made by one of the Royal Navy Commandos, called Lou Armour, in this doc).  And we are in general far more familiar with the mental stresses caused by fighting a war, including but not limited to PTSD.   

And so I found that Lola Arias' documentary was not particularly breaking new ground by showing us soldiers struggling to cope with the aftermath of war. Their personal testimony was powerful, but I wish she had just let them speak rather than forcing them into her arthouse conception of re-enactment as a means to further explore hurt.  They all seemed surprisingly open about their experiences and I just don't think those re-enactments added anything.

Worse still, by reminding is of Joshua Oppenheimer's THE ACT OF KILLING, they created a dangerous equivalence.  Oppenheimer used re-enactment to tease a war criminal into admitting his culpability.  Is Arias trying to do the same with the British soldiers?  Does she see them as in the moral wrong?  I only wonder because the story she comes back to again and again is of a British soldier witnessing an Argentinean die, rather than the other way round.  It's as if she's trying to use his trauma to paint a picture of wider British guilt. And the soldiers themselves seem to agree - with the Brits drinking at a bar, saying that this is basically an Argentinean project, and that it's not what they bargained for. 

A better film - more deserving of our time - might have used this powerful testimony from both sides, and situated within the context of historians and politicians discussing the events of the time. Sometimes it's not enough to discuss subjective feelings - we also need context and critical examination of the kind Arias clearly is not interested in.

THEATRE OF WAR has a running time of 77 minutes. It played Berlin, SXSW and San Sebastian 2018.  It is playing in the documentary competition at this year's BFI London Film Festival.  There are still tickets available for both screenings. 

London Film Fest 2011 Day 6 - LAS ACACIAS

LAS ACACIAS is at once a simple and complex movie. Technically, it's nothing special.  The story is so simple as to be accused of being simple-minded. Two people fall in love. That is all. And that is everything. The movie opens with Ruben (German de Silva) going about his business as a truck driver hauling logs from Paraguay to Buenos Aires. His boss has compelled him to give Jacinta (Hebe Duarte) and her baby girl Aniha (Nayre Calle Mamani) a lift.  At first he barely opens the door for them - they travel a day before he asks their names.  And yet, as we come closer to Buenos Aires the tension and emotions build.  The three travellers have barely spoken - barely left the confines of the truck - a baby's laugh counts as a major plot point - and yet, and yet, there is an understanding, a longing.  Will Ruben ask to see Jacinta again?  Such is the subtlety and power of this film - coming at under 90 minutes, the first 30 of which are a test of patience - that it is quite shocking when you realise just how fascinated you are with the couple and how tense at the ending. Kudos to the young Argentinian director Pablo Giorgelli and to his fellow writer Salvador Roselli but most of all to the cast. In particular, veteran theatre actor German de Silva is superb - his final scene, wordless, expressing complete emotional exhaustion, vulnerability - is captivating.  This is without doubt one of the most unassuming and yet most deeply affecting and memorable films of the year.  

LAS ACACIAS played Cannes 2011 where it won the ACID Award and the Camera D'Or for best first feature. It also played Toronto and London 2011. It will be released in the UK on November 4th and in France on January 4th 2012.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 5 - YATASTO

YATASTO sounds like it's going to be a rather earnest but dull social realist documentary about poverty in contemporary Argentina.  After all, the doc is described on festival programmes as following three young poor boys as they drive a donkey and cart through the rich parts of the city, collecting trash to sell and make money to live. The donkey, called Yatasto, gives the movie its name. But, to my surprise, YATASTO is actually surprisingly funny and heart-felt, and even pampered Western audiences in an art-house cinema can relate. This is because the movie is given a lot of heart and warmth by its three protagonists - the young kids have a great sense of humour, do the kind of goofy things all kids do, and are beautifully captured by a camera that seems to have simply become part of the furniture for them.  The resulting footage never feels forced or grim, but is just a delight of wonderfully observed small moments. You leave the cinema feeling that you really know the kids - their hopes, dreams, boasts, delusions - as well as their families.  A real hidden gem of the festival.

YATASTO played Buenos Aires, Marseille, Hamburg and London. It does not yet have a commercial release date.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 12 - CARANCHO

I found watching CARANCHO to be a rather alienating experience. It's all very well acted, and beautifully filmed. The movie drips with social realist integrity. The central romance feels authentic and the finale builds to a point of genuine tension. But for all that, and I'm not sure why, it somehow just didn't work for me. Maybe it was the unrelentingly dour environment or the lingering sense that writer-director, Pablo Trapero, was more interested in the message than the emotional life of his characters. Maybe I just felt that the two lead characters just didn't "click" on screen. Either way, I found CARANCHO to be a far less satisfying film than his previous London Film Fest entry, LION'S DEN.

The movie is basically a story of redemption set in the grimy urban squalor of contemporary Buenos Aires, much as in LION'S DEN. Ricardo Darin (so wonderful in THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES) plays Sosa, a lawyer who lost his license, now working as an ambulance chaser for a ruthless firm, and not above fabricating claims. He is trying to rebuild his self-esteem and his integrity partly to deserve the woman he has fallen in love with - a paramedic called Lujan, played by Trapero regular, Martina Gusman. She is another vulnerable, compromised character. On the surface, she is straight medic, but underneath she's self-medicating to get through her stressful schedule. Somehow, the complex emotional relationship between these two characters, and the xposé of the ambulance chasing industry should be more compelling than it is.

CARANCHO played Cannes and Toronto 2010 and opened in Argentina and Spain earlier this year.

THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES - Ampas is vindicated

When THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES beat DAS WEISSE BAND and UN PROPHET for Best Foreign Language Oscar I thought, given the Academy's woeful form, that this was just another miscarriage of cine-justice. Well, UN PROPHET remains one of the best films I've seen this year, but THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES is equally good. In fact, in some ways, in its technical accomplishment and the delicate balancing act it pulls off juggling genres, it's even better. All I can say is that it has been a long time since I've seen a movie that made me laugh out loud and moved me to tears - that made me feel like I wanted to spend more time with the characters than I'd been given; but also utterly satisfied at the end. This is a truly tremendous movie - evocative, profound, sentimental, sometimes hokey - but always fascinating.

The heart of the movie is a retired law clerk called Benjamin Esposito. In contemporary Buenos Aires he tries to make sense of his life by writing about the sensational Morales case of 1974. In flashbacks, we see the beautiful Liliana raped and murdered, and her modest husband Ricardo Morales devastated by her death. We see Benjamin and his side-kick, drunken wise-man Sandoval, refuse to let the case drop. And we see Benjamin's glamorous senior litigator, Irene, join him in a witness interrogation that results in a conviction. But we also see the consequences of this prosecution. How the corruption in the Argentinian political and judicial system conspires against the earnest young lawyers, and the grieving bank clerk - how it corrupts and obstructs love itself.

The events of 1974 are inter-cut with Benjamin as an old man, rehearsing these events with Irene. We see them step gently through their shared past, through documents, photographs, in offices heaped with papers bound with string. The irony is that they have lived their lives surrounded by documents and words, and yet they are still struggling to agree on a shared memory and interpretation of events - literally, they cannot find the words. In one of the most elegant motifs of the film, we see a cranky typewriter passed around the major characters - the letter "A" doesn't work - until the final scene, when it all makes sense. The theme is further explored in Benjamin's relationship with Ricardo Morales. We see what it is to be trapped in the past and to be in a prisoner of memory. In one of the most telling lines in the film, a character begs for conversation - again, reiterating the idea that to be denied words is the cruellest of punishments.

THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES explores ideas of memory, loss, love, meaning, but it is never pretentious or ponderous. In fact, the film contains some of the best cine-swearing I have seen since IN THE LOOP, and in the relationship between Esposito and Sandoval we have a touching, hilarious double-act. It's also lovely to see a love story between two middle-aged people who don't look Hollywood-beautiful but real and attractive. Finally, for those of a technical bent, writer-director Juan José Campanella has created a seminal helicopter-CGI tracking shot that takes us from above a football stadium and into the crowd - you can see how it was done here.

THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES won the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 2010, beating UN PROPHET and DAS WEISSE BAND. It is Juan Jose Campanella's second movie to receive an Oscar nonination and is Argentina's first movie to feature in the IMDB Top 250.

THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES played Toronto 2009. It was released in Argentina, Spain, Uruguay and Paraguay last year. It was released earlier this year in Chile, Ecuador, Israel, Brazil, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Norway, Sweden, the USA, Canada, Finland, Turkey, Denmark, France, New Zealand, Portugal, Australia, Mexico, Italy and Greece. It is currently on release in the UK and Japan and opens next week in the Netherlands. It opens on October 28th in Germany.

TETRO - They fuck you up, your mum and dad - Part Four

TETRO is a beautiful, fantastical, shamelessly self-indulgent movie about family dysfunction and the impossibility of living with a self-proclaimed genius. It is worth watching for the cinematography and Vincent Gallo's lead performance alone - but there are many other joys to be had - not least a blistering cameo from Klaus Maria Brandauer; a cheeky little Dolce Vita moment featuring Carmen Maura; and a wonderful little Red Shoes homage.

The most surprising thing about TETRO is that is was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola - indeed, it is his first writer-director credit since THE CONVERSATION. The result is a movie that feels nothing like Coppola's mafia epics - despite some similarity in the emotional material. TETRO also feels nothing like Coppola's last movie - another self-financed (and unjustifiably maligned) art-house flick - YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH. That movie was beautifully shot, but serious, mournful, byzantine in its structure and conceit. By contrast, while TETRO may deal with the most violent of emotions, but it always has a playful, self-mocking edge. At times, it almost feels like the lighter parts of Almodovar. Every character is sometimes aware that they are striking a pose - that is, except Miranda (Maribel Verdu - Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN) who is the emotional heart of the film.

Tetro is the pen-name of playwright Angelo Tetracini (Vincent Gallo). He cut loose from his domineering, Mephisto-like conductor father (Klaus Maria Brandauer) and ran off to Buenos Aires. This movie opens as his little brother Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich - a dead-ringer for the young Leo diCaprio) shows up on his doorstep - still hero-worshipping his elder brother but also angry that Tetro left him behind with the monster-father. Tetro's girlfriend Miranda adores having Bennie around, but for Tetro to come to terms with a relationship with Bennie, he will have to confront many family ghosts. That - and a performance at a arts festival in Patagonia - provide the narrative and emotional drive of the movie.

Gallo perfectly embodies the hard-faced charisma of Tetro. Ehrenreich has just the right mix of vulnerability and chutzpah to be able to pull off the central con of Bennie finishing Tetro's long abandoned play. Verdu's Miranda is charming and credible - anchoring a movie featuring all sorts of crazy characters. I particularly loved Carmen Maura as "Alone" - the theatre critic that allows Coppola to spoof the art-house world he is at once seeking to re-engage with. But the real masterstroke is casting Klaus Maria Brandauer (MEPHISTO) as Papa Tetracini - world-famous composer, charmer and shit. The genius is that even an old and flabby Brandauer can be charming enough to convince as the seducer of his young son's girlfriend - or as the firebrand Furtwaenglerian composer. He commands attention in every scene he's in and we can well understand why his sons struggle to escape from his physical and emotional presence.

I loved TETRO - moreso on the second viewing. And I am thrilled that Coppola is moving back to these self-financed, self-penned utterly artistically liberated movies.

Additional tags: alden ehrenreich, maribel verdu, rodrigo de la serna, klaus maria brandauer, osvaldo golijov, mihai malaimare jr

TETRO played Cannes and Toronto 2009 and was released in Spain, Greece, Portugal, Italy and France last year. It was released in Hungary and Brazil earlier this year and is currently on release in the UK.

London Film Festival Day 14 - LION'S DEN / LEONERA

This festival has seen a trio of movies anchored by powerful performances by men - HUNGER, IL DIVO and THE WRESTLER. So it's refreshing to finally come across a movie that centres on the performance of a woman, and also highlights the specifically feminine issue of motherhood, and more powerfully, raising a child while incarcerated.

As the film opens, our protagonist, Julia (Martina Gusman), wakes up in bed, bruised, bloodied and in shock. She automatically goes out for the day and returns him, and only then does she realise that there is a dead man in her house. She's arrested and charged with killing the man - the lover of her boyfriend (Rodrigo Santoro). Prison overwhelms this shy pregnant woman, unwilling to shower naked, spurning the lesbian advances of her fellow inmates. By the time she is tried and convicted, three years later, she has become as brazen, strong, and willing to accept intimacy as the other prisoners. As her son grows, the question arises of what should happen to Julia's son Tomas. Julia's mother thinks that prison is no fit place for a child to live. But Julia thinks that the best place for her son is with his mother. And so we build to a tense denouement in which Julia goes to extreme lengths to protect her child.

LEONERA isn't the kind of film that's full of action and plot points. It's essentially the story of a woman who grows in self-knowledge and strength through her friendship with other women and her love for her child. Despite it's apparently dour subject matter, I can reassure you that it never drags, moves along at a swift pace, is utterly engrossing, and ultimately, uplifting.

LEONERA played Cannes, Toronto and London 2008. It was released in Argentina and Spain earlier this year. It opens in France on December 3rd and in the Netherlands on December 11th.

BUENOS AIRES 1977/CRONICA DE UNA FUGA - tense thriller

BUENOS AIRES 1977 is a new movie from the Uruguayan writer-director, Israel Adrián Caetano. It is based on the autobiography of a goal-keeper called Claudio Tamburrini who was abducted by Argentine para-militaries in 1977, tortured, held captive for over 4 months and eventually escaped. It is an unpretentious movie. It does not lift its eyes from the decaying colonial mansion in which the alleged terrorists are held. Those seeking edification on Argentine history will be disappointed. But in a way this is the secret of the movie's success. By showing us only the experience of the prisoners, it maintains a feeling of claustrophobia, fear and tension. Indeed, despite the fact that we know the prisoners escape because the movie is based on their testimony - the final escape scenes had me literally on the edge of my seat.

The director achieves this tension by using an outstanding sound design and photographic techniques that pump up the contrast and drain the colour - creating a surreal disconcerting visual and audio environment. But the success of the movie is really down to an outstanding central performance by Rodrigo de la Serna. He is probably best known to European audiences as the guy playing opposite Gael Garcia Bernal in THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES. Here he has to show the shock, outrage and fear of a normal man being tortured for information he cannot give. Most of the time he has to act with a scarf covering his eyes - and it is a physical performance rather than one resting on the delivery of dialogue. What's really impressive is that Caetano doesn't show any graphic torture. He relies on the way the actors look and act to convey what they have been through.

All in all, BUENOS AIRES 1977 is a great thriller if not overtly political. Well worth checking out.

BUENOS AIRES 1977 a.k.a CRONICA DE UNA FUGA a.k.a CHRONICLE OF AN ESCAPE went on release in Argentina in March 2006 and has since played Cannes (where it was nominated for the Golden Palm), Toronto and London 2006. It opened in Brazil and Mexico earlier this month and opens in France in February 2007.

TO DIE IN SAN HILARIO/MORIR EN SAN HILARIO - formulaic & sappy

TO DIE IN SAN HILARIO is a warm-hearted but formulaic movie from Spanish writer/director Laura Mañá. The movie is set in a sepia-tinted version of World War Two-ish Argentina, where gangsters where pin-stripe suits, fedoras and two-tone shoes and trains still run on steam. One particular gangster is on the run from the law with a bag of stolen cash and ends up in a village so inconsequential that it's not even on the map. The villagers - who exist merely to provide elaborate funerals - mistake the man for a bohemian artist who is about to die and begin planning his funeral. Of course, this being a feel-good romance come comedy, the gangster goes through a redemption and brings joy to the villagers in the process. Altogether now: aaah!

There is much to inspire initial interest in TO DIE IN SAN HILARIO. We are in the sort of territory usually inhabited by Almodovar - eccentric people preserving old rituals of village life. Just think how VOLVER opens with a scene of women polishing graves. The Almodovarian note is also struck by casting Lluís Homar as the gangster - he also played Sr. Berenguer in BAD EDUCATION. However as TO DIE IN SAN HILARIO grinds through its formulaic machinations all interest wanes. The director entirely fails to press home the advantage of this unusual setting. Finally, the film is entirely disposable, and certainly not worth going out of your way to see.

TO DIE IN SAN HILARIO/MORIR EN SAN HILARIO was released in Argentina, Spain, Canada and Brazil in 2005. It is currently on very limited release in the UK and opens in the Netherlands today. It is also available on Region 1 DVD.

Late review - A YEAR WITHOUT LOVE/UN ANO SI AMOR

A YEAR WITHOUT LOVE is a moving film documenting a year in the life of a young, gay, HIV positive writer living in Buenos Aires. Unable to get his poetry published he resorts to writing a diary of his deteriorating health, response to meds and interaction with his crazy aunt and distant father. The movie is shot in a documentary style on Super-16 so often has a grainy quality, but this shouldn't be too much of a problem if you are watching it on DVD. The movie is also unflinching in its portrayal of the underground S&M scene. (It's a year without love, not without sex!) Not for the faint-hearted, but a fascinating and moving (if sometimes slow-paced) portrayal of the search for meaningful contact. (Thanks to Alistair for the tip-off.)

A YEAR WITHOUT LOVE/UN ANO SI AMOR played at Berlin 2005 and did a tour of festivals without ever getting a proper US release. It went on limited release in the Netherlands and the UK earlier in 2006 and was released on Region 2 DVD in July.

SECUESTRO EXPRESS - exhilerating, but one for DVD

Just as many a duff British movie has tried to replicate the success of FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL, it now seems that every movie featuring Latin American urban crime is marketed as the new CITY OF GOD. (Not least the mediocre FAVELA RISING and LOWER CITY.) In the case of the new Venezualan movie, SECUESTRO EXPRESS, this comparison is somewhat misleading.

Where CITY OF GOD was a wide-ranging, hard-hitting analysis of poverty and crime, SECUESTRO EXPRESS has a far narrower focus. This is not bad thing, but merely a factual statement that you should not expect an "epic" but a closely observed blow by blow account of a single kidnapping. The movie opens with four guys going to work in the early hours of the morning. They have convenient captions in true Guy-Ritchie-style. You know, "Meet X: thief, rapist and model father." The guys are poor and desperate and at various points on that gray-scale of professional ethics. That morning they put into play their usual kidnapping operation, taking a rich young couple as they leave a nightclub. The movie then follows them blackmailing the hostages' parents, scoring drugs, threatening the hostages and finally making the handover.

This thin sliver of a plot is actually rather neat as it allows the movie to become very talky compared to other movies of this kind. Indeed, despite the odd flashes of violence, this is rather a nice black comedy wrapped around some authentic-sounding discussion of the situation in Caracas. For instance, of the hostages, the boyfriend is a spoiled rich kid who regards all poor people as potential criminals and wants to keep well away from them. By contrast, his girlfriend is a warm-hearted person who wants to give them a chance. Similarly, among the kidnappers we have a lot of discussion about why they do what they do, and the limits of their mission. Moreover, throughout the movie we get some fascinating material on the complicity of the police. I also love the fact that numerous times, the kidnappers are themselves threatened with or victims of theft.

Where the movie really scores is in presenting this this material with high energy thanks to performances of credibility and intensity and a gritty script. This is only a short movie but it really flew by and there were several set-ups where I was fearful for the characters on screen. That alone makes this a great thriller. In addition, while I know that this is not the only face of Venezuala, I did find the raw footage of Caracas and the issues addressed in the film full of insight.

However, for me the movie has two major flaws. First, in terms of the story, the final five minutes jumped the shark. I can't say more for fear of spoiling the plot. Suffice it to say that if it had ended five minutes earlier you would have had, to my mind, a far more balls-out gritty drama. Second, the use of digital video is both a blessing and a curse. Digital video has two merits - it is cheap and it is mobile. So if you are shooting a first feature with no budget and you need a fast-paced, in-your-face shooting style, it's perfect. However, it takes a really talented, experienced photographer to use DV in a manner that will translate well on to the cinema screen once it has been blown up. Unfortunately, that was not the case with SECUESTRO EXPRESS. At first I thought - hey! this is cool - the grainy, blurred images just emphasise the nastiness of the material. But after a while, it got distracting.

Overall then, while SECUESTRO EXPRESS is no CITY OF GOD, it is a fascinating, exhilerating crime caper, with some black humour, some tense moments and some superb acting. However, given how poor the print is, you may well find it a better viewing experience to watch in on the small screen.

SECUESTRO EXPRESS played in the US last year and is currently on release in the UK. It hits Australia on July 13th 2006.

FAMILIA RODANTE - Are we there yet?

FAMILIA RODANTE tells the tale of an eccentric old granny who takes her extended family 1500km across country in a decrepit camper van to attend a family wedding. I know I was meant to find this bunch of eccentrics charming and their little family arguments and flirtations endearing but I just found it dull, and vaguely depressing. When I was a kid my family would take long trips to visit relations in London. This was back before the M25 or climate control existed, and we'd spending hours crawling along the M1 in an over-heated Vauxhall. You know how it is. The slightest comment on dad's map-reading abilities flares into an irritable argument. You crawl through channels on the radio but only find crappy country music. Half the passengers are asleep, their sweaty foreheads stuck to the hot polyester seat covers. Perhaps the only chance of excitement is when your idiot kid-brother sticks his head out of the window as a lorry passes. Other than that it's just monotonous countryside and the odd petrol station. Well, having suffered enough of these journeys as a kid, I feel no need to suffer through anyone else's, even if they are from Argentina.

FAMILIA RODANTE premiered at Venice 2004 and went on limited release in the UK in November 2005. It goes on limited release in the US in August 2006 but is already available on Region 2 DVD.