The travelling festival, the Moviemov Italian Film Fest is back in Bangkok, in its, XIII edition, and will be screened at House Samyan from Feb 27 to March 1.
The 2024 festival pays homage to director Ferzan Ozpetek and will be held in collaboration with the Embassy of Italy, the Thai-Italian Chamber of Commerce and the Italian Trade Agency. The preview presentation begins in Rome and continues in Bangkok with screenings, in addition to the international preview of the restored copy of Hamam (Steam: The Turkish Bath). Ozpetek will also introduce two of his most iconic films, Le Fate Ignoranti (The Ignorant Fairies) and Mine Vaganti (Loose Cannons). Ozpetek will also dialogue with viewers.
“It is an immense joy to know of the restoration of my directorial debut film and of the initiatives for a new circulation. The memory of that first difficult experience of uncertainty and exhilaration still excites me,” says Ozpetek.
The festival opens on Feb 27 at 7.40pm with C'è Ancora Domani (There's Still Tomorrow). The film is about trying to escape from the patriarchy in the Italian post-war society, the protagonist, Delia, plotting an act of rebellion against her violent husband. In his review, Screen International critic Allan Hunter paired the film to the classic Italian neorealism cinema and described it as "an unashamed, old-fashioned melodrama [which] develops into a more considered tale of small victories on the road to female empowerment.”
On Feb 28 at 4.30pm, L'Ultima Notte Di Amore (Last Night Of Amore) will be screened. On the night before his retirement, a police lieutenant named Franco Amore is called to investigate a crime scene where his best friend and long-time partner Dino has been killed during a diamond heist.
On Feb 28 at 7.05pm, Hamam (Steam: The Turkish Bath) from director Ferzan Ozpetek will be screened. Francesco and Marta are husband and wife running a small design company in Rome. When Francesco's long forgotten Aunt Anita dies in Istanbul, he travels there to look after the sale of the hamam (one of a few traditional Turkish baths left) he inherited. There he meets the family running the hamam, gets attracted to a member of it and the whole Turkish atmosphere and decides not to sell the hamam.
On Feb 28 at 9.20pm, Comandante will be screened. Salvatore Todaro is the captain of the Cappellini. He leads in his own way: the bow is reinforced with steel, in the off-chance an opportunity to ram a ship arises, his crew is armed with daggers, should an hand-to-hand battle occurs. The film opened the 80th Venice International Film Festival.
On Feb 29 at 4.30pm, Le Fate Ignoranti (The Ignorant Fairies) will be screened. Aids doctor Antonia's husband is killed by a car. She gets depressed until she learns he had been cheating on her with a man. Following her newly-born curiosity for life, she goes to see her husband's lover, Michele, and finds a huge apartment that he shares with gay and transgender friends, including a Turkish immigrant and a prostitute. Antonia is reluctant to tell these people of her relationship to the dead man, but needs prompting to move on to a new phase of her life.
On Feb 29 at 6.35pm, Ghiaccio will be screened. The movie takes place in Rome in 1999. Giorgio is a young boxing hopeful. He lives with his mother on the outskirts of the city. Years earlier his father was murdered, leaving a legacy of debt to the underworld that does not allow him to be a free man.
On Feb 29 at 9.15pm, Io Capitano will be screened. A Homeric fairy tale that tells the adventurous journey of two young boys, Seydou and Moussa, who leave Dakar to reach Europe.
On March 1 at 4.30pm, Mine Vaganti (Loose Cannons) will be screened. Tommaso is the youngest son of the Cantones, a large, traditional southern Italian family operating a pasta-making business since the 1960s. On a trip home from Rome, where he studies literature and lives with his boyfriend, Tommaso decides to tell his parents the truth about himself. But when he is finally ready to come out in front of the entire family, his older brother Antonio ruins his plans.
On March 1 at 7pm, Mia will be screened. The film has at the centre of the narrative the love between a father and his daughter. First the difficulty of watching her grow up, then the torment of knowing that she is suffering, the fear that he might lose her, and finally the need to have to defend her. The story of a small, simple, happy family into which a boy violently enters, a manipulator, who turns the life of Mia, a wonderful 15-year-old girl, upside down.
On March 1 at 9.30pm, Mixed By Erry will be screened. The rise and fall of the pirate mixtape empire of three brothers from Naples and their Mixed By Erry-trademarked cassettes that brought pop music to 80s Italian youth.
All movies will be screened in their original soundtrack, which is Italian, with Thai and English subtitles. The festival is free and first come, first served. Pick up tickets at House Samyan Box Office, 5th floor, Samyan Mitrtown.
