The cinema of Italy comprises the films made within Italy or by Italian directors. Since its beginning, Italian cinema has influenced film movements worldwide. Italy is one of the birthplaces of art cinema and the stylistic aspect of film has been the most important factor in the history of Italian film. As of 2018, Italian films have won 14 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film as well as 12 Palmes d'Or, one Academy Award for Best Picture and many Golden Lions and Golden Bears.
Vittorio De Sica was an Italian film director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement.
Margarethe von Trotta is a German film director, screenwriter, and actress. She has been referred to as a "leading force" of the New German Cinema movement. Von Trotta's extensive body of work has won awards internationally. She was married to and collaborated with director Volker Schlöndorff. Although they made a successful team, von Trotta felt she was seen as secondary to Schlöndorff. Subsequently, she established a solo career for herself and became "Germany's foremost female film director, who has offered the most sustained and successful female variant of Autorenkino in postwar German film history". Certain aspects of von Trotta's work have been compared to Ingmar Bergman's features from the 1960s and 1970s.
Gianni Amelio is an Italian film director.
Ginevra Elkann is a London-born Italian film producer and director. She is a member of the Agnelli family and granddaughter of Italian industrialist Gianni Agnelli.
Ferzan Özpetek is a Turkish-Italian film director and screenwriter, residing in Italy.
Sergio Castellitto is an Italian actor, film director, and screenwriter.
The Young Cinema Award is a film award given at the Venice Film Festival. The motto of the award is "Spirit of time: a look to the present". The jury consists of one hundred 18- to 25-year-olds from different countries, such as France, Canada, Poland, Hungary, and Italy. The 2016 edition gathered French, Tunisian, and Italian young people.
Ferragosto is a public holiday celebrated on August 15th in all of Italy. It originates from Feriae Augusti, the festival of emperor Augustus, who made the 1st of August a day of rest after weeks of hard work on the agricultural sector. It became a custom for the workers to wish their employers "buon ferragosto" and receive a monetary bonus in return. This became law during the Renaissance throughout the papal states. As the festivity was created for political reasons, the Catholic Church decided to move the festivity to the 15th of August which is the Assumption of Mary allowing them to include this in the festivity. This festivity was also used by Mussolini to give the lower classes the possibility to visit cultural cities or go to the seaside for one to three days, from the 14th of August to the 16th, by creating "holiday trains" with extremely low cost tickets, for this holiday period. Food and board was not included, this is why even today Italians associate packed lunches and barbecues with this day. By metonymy, it is also the summer vacation period around mid-August, which may be a long weekend or most of August. Up until 2010, 90% of companies, shops and industries closed but, the fact that closing an entire country's economy for an entire month would result in serious financial impacts and workplace backlogs, most companies now close for about two weeks, requiring all workers to take mandatory vacation, similar to practice of workplaces closing between the 25th of December and the first of January.
Giovanna Ralli,, is an Italian stage, film and television actress.
The Nastro d'Argento is a film award assigned each year, since 1946, by Sindacato Nazionale dei Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani, the association of Italian film critics.
Nanni Loy was an Italian film, theatre and TV director. Specifically, Nanni Loy was Sardinian, and one of several notable Sardinian film makers, including Franco Solinas.
Paolo Virzì is an Italian film director, writer and producer.
Matteo Garrone is an Italian filmmaker. Born in Rome, the son of a theatre critic, Nico Garrone and a photographer, in 1996 Garrone won the Sacher d'Oro, an award sponsored by Nanni Moretti, with the short film Silhouette, that became one of the three episodes that are on his first long feature, Terra di Mezzo in 1997.
The Bratislava International Film Festival is an international film festival established in 1999 and held annually in Bratislava, Slovakia.
The 65th annual Venice International Film Festival, held in Venice, Italy, was opened on 27 August 2008 by Burn After Reading, and closed on 6 September 2008. International competition jury, led by Wim Wenders, awarded Leone d'Oro to The Wrestler, directed by Darren Aronofsky.
The 22nd European Film Awards were presented on 12 December 2009, in Bochum, Germany.
The Salt of Life is the second film from writer/director/actor Gianni Di Gregorio, who began his directorial career with 2008’s Mid-August Lunch.
Gianni Di Gregorio is an Italian director, screenwriter and actor.
Vivo Film, established in Rome at the beginning of 2004 by Gregorio Paonessa and Marta Donzelli, is an Italian independent production company for art-house films.
