New Italian Cinema

November 15 - November 22

New Italian Cinema is an eight-day festival dedicated to celebrating the rich cinematic tradition of Italy and to bringing to Bay Area audiences the country's newest directors and films.

The mainstay of New Italian Cinema is the competitive section featuring seven films by emerging directors. The festival opens with a three-film tribute to director Marco Risi, one of Italy's most celebrated filmmakers and closes with Marco Bellocchio's latest tour de force, Vincere, an operatic take on the true story of Mussolini's first wife and their secret child.

Other highlights of the festival include PA-RA-DA, the heartwarming true story of a French street clown who teaches orphans in Bucharest his trade; Lecture 21, a visually stylish, adventurous film that offers an impressionistic recreation of a lecture on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony; and The Sicilian Girl, in which a 17-year-old girl's court testimony is the linchpin in bringing down numerous members of the Sicilian mob.

Many of the directors are attending the screenings for Q&As after the show, so be sure to stick around after the credits roll.

This festival is part of the San Francisco Film Society's series of fall film festivals, which you can read more about here.