Viva Italia!

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The Italian Pavilion at the EFM

VERDICT: Italy was 2024’s Country in Focus at the Berlinale’s European Film Market.

The 74th Berlinale is gearing up for a busy closing weekend, with two full days of screenings still to go at the time of writing. Meanwhile the European Film Market, which runs parallel to the public side of the festival, has already closed the book on the physical side of its 2024 edition, though online activities are still partially ongoing until the end of March. Per the official press release and EFM Director Dennis Ruh, the business side of things was “very well-attended and extremely busy”, drawing a record attendance of 12,000 visitors from 143 different countries. And among the highlights of this year’s Market was the the Country in Focus sidebar devoted to Italy.

Granted, one may question the logic of spotlighting a country that has no major difficulties getting international exposure, as seen with the high festival prominence of Italian cinema over the last 12 months, from last year’s Berlinale to this year’s via Cannes, Locarno, Venice and, just a few weeks ago, Rotterdam. Then again, that may well be a good reason to have such a Focus: to let interested buyers and programmers see what has recently gained attention, or is likely to do so in the near future.

In fact, the Italian box office, one of the major casualties of the pandemic, became a case study in the last couple of months of 2023 due to the surprising success of There’s Still Tomorrow, the directorial debut of popular actress and comedienne Paola Cortellesi. This feminist comedy-drama, set in the aftermath of World War II, premiered at the Rome Film Fest, where it won three prizes including the Audience Award, and opened nationwide on October 26. It has grossed nearly 37 million euros, the best result of the year, and the ninth top-grossing movie of all time in Italy, unadjusted for inflation. Four months later it is still playing in cinemas domestically, and set to expand internationally next month. A few weeks ago it won yet another audience award, in Gothenburg.

As part of the special Focus, in addition to film screenings and promo reels by Italian production companies, EFM attendees also got to participate in specific themed sessions, with topics ranging from independent animation to the role of archives in the audiovisual marketplace. There was also a crossover with the festival’s Official Selection, with a TV series talk called Past Forward: Bringing Contemporary Perspectives to Italian Period Drama. In charge of the discussion was filmmaker Matteo Rovere, one of the producers and directors of one of this year’s hot tickets at the Berlinale: the steamy Netflix miniseries Supersex, loosely based on the life of porn star Rocco Siffredi, who attended the gala screening alongside his screen alter ego Alessandro Borghi.

Cinecittà’s Roberto Stabile tells The Film Verdict the planning for the EFM Focus was arduous, as it began during the pandemic, but ultimately worthwhile as the overall assessment is that the Focus was a success, especially the panel promoting incentives for co-productions with Italy and tax credits for international productions wishing to shoot in the country. Indeed, he acknowledges our query regarding the choice to have an Italian focus: “As ours is a more visible country, our task was less obvious than when other territories have been the Country in Focus,” he says. “So, we took advantage of the initiative to highlight all the tools Italy can provide to foreigners, based on three guidelines.”

Those three guidelines are: supporting the international circulation of finished films via the Film Distribution Fund; supporting co-productions via meetings with international producers and other interested parties at festivals and markets; and, as mentioned above, promoting Italy as a filming location for international productions, highlighting tax credits, regional funds, the work of the regional film commissions, the skill of Italian crew members, and Cinecittà itself as a new major hub for all of Europe.

The EFM may be over, but for Italy’s new global aspirations, this was just the beginning.