Cinema

Chased like a Hollywood diva in Cannes by the international press, Noomi Rapace (pictured here), the star of the first Millennium film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will play the lead in veteran actress Pernilla August’s directorial debut. In Svinalängorna (working title), a film adaptation of Susanna Alakoski’s best-selling novel, Rapace will tackle another challenging and difficult role: as the Finnish daughter of alcoholic parents who has a tough upbringing in 1970s Sweden. August, winner of a Best Actress Award in Cannes 1992 for The Best Intentions, told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that she always thought directing would be a fantastic experience, ever since she was 16 and got her first role in Roy Andersson’s Giliap. The project will be produced by Hepp Film with Drakfilm in Sweden. Principal photography is set for the end of the summer.

After winning numerous prizes at European festivals, and obtaining great results at the Croatian box office, Dalibor Matanic’s Kino Lika has won the Golden Olive Award for Best Film at the Festival of European Cinema at Lecce, which ended yesterday. For the international jury, the film co-produced by Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina and based on the acclaimed novel by Damir Karakas, "efficiently depicts a story of loneliness and desperation in a small mountain community". The Special Jury Prize went to Arash T. Riahi’s For a Moment, Freedom (Austria), which moved audiences with its tale of the odysseys of Iranian and Kurdish refugees fleeing from their countries to Europe. Best Cinematography went to Hungarian director Róbert Alföldi’s Tranquility, lensed by Tamas Babos. Best Screenplay was won by French title The Beautiful Person by Christophe Honorè.

Director Julien Temple will be in Milano next Friday, February the 27th, for a lecture on cinema at Università Cattolica in the morning and a meeting with the audience at Cinema Gnomo in the evening. Grown up during the explosion of the British punk scene, Temple worked with great stars such as David Bowie, Rolling Stone and Depeche Mode. The eventi s part of the program Wild Side, curated by Esterni.

Keanu Reeves plays a young, tattooed shop assistant who turns the suburban world of his quiet neighbor upside down in Rebecca Miller's new film The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. Pippa Lee, played by Robin Wright Penn, has just moved to a retirement community with her successful publisher husband Herb, a man 30 years her senior where her life revolves around serving perfectly cooked lamb and decorating her home. But as she befriends aging neighbors and enrols in a pottery class with women old enough to be her mother, she starts to question her role as respectable mother, wife and hostess. The arrival of Reeves' character Chris, an unkempt 35-year-old who drives a beaten-up van and sports a giant Jesus tattoo on his chest, brings her angst into focus.