Omero Antonutti

Quote:
Ten years after making his mark on Spanish cinema with The Spirit of the Beehive, Víctor Erice returned to filmmaking with this adaptation of a novella by Adelaida García Morales, which deepens the director’s fascination with childhood, fantasy, and the legacy of his country’s civil war. In the North of Spain, Estrella grows up captivated by her father, a doctor with mystical powers—and by the enigma of his youth in the South, a near-mythical region whose secrets haunt Estrella more and more as time goes on. Though Erice’s original vision also encompassed a section set in the South itself, scenes that were never shot, El Sur remains an experience of rare perfection and satisfaction, drawing on painterly cinematography by José Luis Alcaine to evoke the enchantments of memory and the inaccessible, inescapable mysteries of the past.Read More »

Paolo and Vittorio Taviani first garnered critical attention with this adaptation of Gavino Ledda’s autobiography, winning both the Golden Palm and the Critics Prize at Cannes in 1977. Gavino’s father pulls him out of elementary school at the age of 6 to force him into the life of a Sardinian shepherd, often severely beating him. Yet Gavino’s illiteracy spurs him on to eventually earn a university degree on Sardinian dialects. And it’s his journey from the cruel, solitary, animal world of shepherding under the yoke of his tyrant Padre, to that of a writer and a linguist that forms the body of this tale. But more, it’s a showcase for the talents of the Taviani brothers, whose style keeps us distant from their subject, like a child watching an ant colony.Read More »

Synopsis
Lead by Alexandros (Omero Antonuti), a group of thieves escape from prison. They take several aristocrats hostage, and, together with a few anarchists, they go to Alexandros’ village, where an administrative system of common ownership and equality among all the inhabitants has been instituted. They ask the aristocrats to return the land to the villagers, but their demands are not met because soldiers have surrounded the village. The anarchists try to leave but are killed on the way. Alexandros executes the hostages; the soldiers kill his comrades, and the villagers murder him. The only survivor is a little boy named Alexandros (Ilias Zafeiropoulos), who escapes and goes to Athens.Read More »