Food and family provide a touch of humour - and plenty of poignancy - to a pair of films making their Los Angeles debuts. A FIVE STAR LIFE follows a Leading Hotels of the World inspector who spends her life on the road, testing the service at 5-star hotels; director Maria Sole Tognazzi joins us in person for a discussion before the film. In Paolo Genovese’s A PERFECT FAMILY, a rich man gathers the perfect family around him for the Christmas holidays – by hiring a troupe of actors. Leading actress Claudia Gerini will meet with the audience.

On a different note, actress Valeria Golino makes her directorial debut with HONEY, a story of assisted suicide; the film’s star, Jasmine Trinca, joins us for the screening. Documentarian Leonardo Di Costanzo makes his narrative feature debut with THE INTERVAL, about two teens – one a captor, the other captive – in a cavernous building outside of Naples. Daniele Luchetti’s keenly observed THOSE HAPPY YEARS looks at a narcissistic artist whose career and marriage go up in flames. And director Giuseppe Tornatore (NUOVO CINEMA PARADISO) returns with THE BEST OFFER, which stars Geoffrey Rush as the manager of a prestigious auction house who becomes obsessed with a mysterious client.

All films are in Italian with English subtitles, except otherwise mentioned.
Series compiled by Laura DelliColli, Camilla Cormanni and Gwen Deglise.
Program notes by John Hagelston.

Italy’s Official Entry Best Foreign Language Film 2014 Academy Award®!
THE GREAT BEAUTY (LA GRANDE BELLEZZA), 2013, Janus Films, 142 min.

Director Paolo Sorrentino (IL DIVO) returns with a dazzling elegy to Rome’s past glories – and those of Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo). A once-promising writer, Jep fritters away his time with Roman high society . There are echoes of LA DOLCE VITA in this portrait of a man adrift in the Eternal City, not the least of which is the sense one is witnessing a master filmmaker at work. Official selection of the 2013 Cannes International Film Festival.
“THE GREAT BEAUTY will surprise, perplex and bewitch highbrow audiences yearning for cinematic feasts.”  - Jay Weissberg, Variety

Red carpet from 4:30 pm. The evening begins at 5:15 pm with the Cinema Italian Style opening ceremony, including CIS award to director Bernardo Bertolucci and Paolo Sorrentino. Feature film will start at 6:00 PM. Invitation only or http://www.afi.com/afifest/freetickets.aspx

Double Feature: Los Angeles Premiere!
A PERFECT FAMILY (UNA FAMIGLIA PERFETTA) 2012, Lotus Production, 120 min.

The latest film from director Paolo Genovese (THE IMMATURE) was a Nastro d’Argento nominee for Best Comedy by the Italian film critics union (S.N.G.C.I.). The wealthy Leone (Sergio Castellitto) dreads the thought of spending another Christmas alone - so he hires a group of actors to play his family. But his script for the perfect family holiday doesn’t go quite as planned.

The comedic possibilities of Italian politics come to the fore in this affable look at Giuseppe Garibaldi (Claudio Bisio). A simple man, Giuseppe lives in the countryside, passing his time with trout fishing, when a mistake makes him President of Italy. Rather than resigning, he takes the job, and in best Frank Capra style, brings common sense and honesty to a capitol rife with cynicism.

Films introduced by actress Claudia Gerini (A PERFECT FAMILY) and Kasia Smutniak (WELCOME MR. PRESIDENT).

Double Feature: Los Angeles Premiere!
HONEY (MIELE), 2013, Cité Films, 100 min., Director Valeria Golino.

Irene (Jasmine Trinca, winner of Nastrod’Argento 2013 as best Italian actress) lives alone in a house on the coast near Rome. Her family thinks of her as a student, but in reality she helps the terminally ill die with dignity by injecting them with a powerful but painless poison. One would-be patient (Carlo Cecchi) has decided he is finished with life but appears to be in good health - and Irene tries to heal him through means other than death.
“Actress Valeria Golino makes a mature transition into directing in a modern-looking character study of a euthanasia activist.” – Deborah Young, The Hollywood Reporter

This thoughtful drama has been compared to UP IN THE AIR and EAT PRAY LOVE. Irene (Margherita Buy winner of the David di Donatello Award as best actress ) has a dream job: travelling through Europe to test the service at 5-star hotels belonging to the Leading Hotels of the World. Yet in the lap of that luxury, she is alone. When her one male friend is confronted with (unplanned) parenthood, Irene begins to wonder if there’s more to life than good room service. The film was awarded with 2013 Nastro d’Argento as Best Comedy by the Italian film critics union (S.N.G.C.I.).

Films introduced by actress Jasmine Trinca (HONEY) and director Maria Sole Tognazzi (A FIVE STAR LIFE)

Double Feature: Los Angeles Premiere!
LONG LIVE FREEDOM (VIVA LA LIBERTÀ), 2013, Rai – International Sales, 92 min. Director Roberto Andò.

Enrico Olivieri (Toni Servillo) is a politician who, convinced he will be voted out of office, flees to the refuge of an old mistress in Paris. Confusion reigns in Italy when Enrico cannot be found, so his party’s leaders decide to replace him with his twin brother – an eccentric writer/philosopher, who, despite his instability, brings some useful talents to the task. Winner of the 2013 edition of Nastrod’Argento and David di Donatello awards for the best screenplay.

Guido (Kim Rossi Stuart) is too self-centered to see that wife Serena (Micaela Ramazzotti) is upset with all the time he spends cavorting with beautiful women in his studio. So it’s a rude awakening when she leaves the narcissistic artist for a “feminist retreat” – right after his big Milan gallery show has gone horribly wrong. Daniele Luchetti’s keenly observed marital drama is leavened with humor and a hint of autobiography.

Films introduced by director Roberto Andò (LONG LIVE FREEDOM)

Double Feature: Los Angeles Premiere!
THE BEST OFFER (LA MIGLIORE OFFERTA), 2012, IFC Films, 124 min. Director Giuseppe Tornatore.

The manager of a prestigious auction house, Virgil Oldman (Geoffrey Rush) is employed by an heiress (Sylvia Hoeks) to sell a huge art collection she inherited from her parents. But the mysterious young woman drives their professional relationship to the edge of obsession. The latest from director Tornatore (NUOVO CINEMA PARADISO), winner of the David di Donatello 2013 as Best director, benefits from the work of such master craftsmen as Ennio Morricone (winner of the David di Donatello for the Best sound), and costars Donald Sutherland and Jim Sturgess. Winner of the Nastro d’Argento and David di Donatello awards for the Best film of 2013.

In an abandoned building in the suburbs of Napoli, teen boy Salvatore (Alessio Gallo), is told by the local crime boss to guard wild child Veronica (Francesca Riso) – but he is not told why she is there. As the day progresses, they explore the giant building that confines them, and an unusual rapport develops between the two. In his debut feature, documentarian Leonardo Di Costanzo (winner of the David di Donatello as Best new director) makes effective use of his young performers and the film’s cavernous central location.

The film is a tribute to and a portrait of Federico Fellini, told by Ettore Scola on the twentieth anniversary of the great director’s death. Other than Fellini’s incredibly rich cinema – a shared treasure for a worldwide audience – a devoted admirer of the incomparable maestro wants to commemorate a few private and lesser-known aspects of Fellini’s personality. He would like to evoke the privilege of knowing him and the emotions he provoked in all who listened to him with his irony and his thoughts on "life as a party”. The film recounts their encounter in the newsroom of the satirical paper "Marc'Aurelio", their friendships with Ruggero Maccari, Ennio Flaiano, Alberto Sordi and Marcello Mastroianni, the mutual visits their sets in the mythical Theatre 5 of Cinecittà Studios and other shared experiences that cemented their enduring friendship. From his debut in 1939 as a young designer to his fifth Oscar in 1993, year of his seventy-third and last birthday, Federico is depicted as a great Pinocchio that fortunately never turned into a "proper boy". A brief film, perhaps a little cubist, made out of moments, fragments, and scattered impressions in an alternation of scripted scenes, reconstructed and shot in Cinecittà and archive material made available by Istituto Luce and RAI.

Director Federico Fellini feels his way from the neo-realist past to the illusory future in this incredible emotional travelogue of the soul of modern Rome. How better to open the free-wheeling 1960s than with this alternately funny, feral, sweet and seductive meditation on what is truly meaningful (if anything) for the dusk-to-dawn Italian jet set? Marcello Mastroianni was catapulted into superstar status as the sensitive tabloid reporter juggling the affections of several women (voluptuous movie star Anita Ekberg, icy mistress Anouk Aimee and neurotic girlfriend Magali Noel) while making the rounds of the spirit-destroying nightlife of the Via Veneto. Mastroianni’s scene with Ekberg in the Trevi Fountain at dawn remains one of the most timeless, memorable images ever to emerge from world cinema. "I feel that decadence is indispensable to rebirth." - Fellini.