Le Confessioni was so popular during our Annual Program, we HAD to bring it to our ICFF audiences in Quebec City and Montreal. Le Confessioni was a highly anticipated movie in 2016, and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Writer, Best Actor (Toni Servillo), Best Supporting Actor, and Best Photography at the David Di Donatello Awards.
ICFF 2017 Screenings:
June 10th at 7pm at Cinéma Cartier in Quebec City
June 13th at 7pm at Cinémathèque in Montreal
That director Roberto Andò’s movies are as satisfying as a good book is no mistake because Andò is also an author; his latest movie, Le Confessioni (The Confessions) is like a mystery novel that is impossible to put down.Billed as a “thriller”, Le Confessioni is likewise a good old-fashioned whodunit with a big “Clue Game” cast of characters in forced seclusion at a picturesque luxury hotel by the sea plus a murder (or was it a suicide?). Everybody seems a little sinister, including the monk (Toni Servillo) who was invited by the rich and powerful director (Daniel Auteui) for reasons that no one’s quite sure of.
G8 organizers have taken over the resort for a summit and leaders from around the world are there to discuss their top-secret new plan for making the poorest countries in the world even poorer; the film has plenty of lessons about power, money, and morality, but the mystery is what will really draw you in.
It turns out the monk is there for the sole purpose of hearing the director’s confession, and shortly after the two meet, the director’s found dead in his room. Murder or suicide? And does it even matter, since what the group is going to announce about it will be based on which explanation they feel will less severely impact the stock market. What’s the big secret that nobody wants to come out? What’s the monk hiding, and can anyone be trusted?
Tony Servillo has made a career-playing guys that are unflappable and cool as cucumbers, but this is a different kind of serenity, one that comes from integrity instead of arrogance. As everyone around him frets and panics, insisting he tell them what the director shared with him the night he died, the monk is relaxed and composed in his resolve to keep the seal of the confessional.
Andò’s films are particularly original and internationally admired for a reason: He sees the future of Italian cinema and is firmly in the midst of innovative filmmakers who changing the face of Italian cinema. “In the last fifteen years”, he says, “filmmakers have given up on the idea of making films with no relationship to the audience.”
He talks about what he calls a “mortification” of Italian cinema that had developed in previous decades, where, “unlike in the US where filmmaking is a strategic industry, Italians just wanted movies that didn’t hurt”.He says that iconic director Bernardo Bertolucci, for example “made beautiful films that nobody saw, and it was in the moment that he (Bertolucci) decided that he wanted an audience that he began to fill theaters, because if you don’t want an audience, then why would an audience want you?”
Andò and Toni Servillo are great friends and had been looking for a project to do together for a while when they made Andò’s book Il Trono Vuoto into the movie Viva La Libertà. According to Andò, Servillo (perhaps Italy’s most important actor) is a simple man who has become a “messenger for Italy.”
“It was obvious even when I was writing Viva La Libertà that it would have to be him (Servillo)”, says Andò, and you’ll see that the same is true for Servillo as Roberto Salus in the spellbinding Le Confessioni.
Toni Servillo and Roberto Andò
To purchase tickets for Le Confessioni and to watch the trailer please click here.
