Off-duty Italy art cops find looted statue in Belgian shop

Rebecca Davis editorMove over, “Nomadland” — Italy’s “Pinocchio” is now set to become the first film nominated at this year’s Oscars to hit China.Although Chloé Zhao’s film nabbed best picture and two other major prizes at the Academy Awards on Sunday, it was pulled quietly from its planned China release on April 23 in the wake of nationalist backlash against her there.

Screen Daily), “The Palace” is set at a hotel in Switzerland on New Year’s Eve 1999. Rai Cinema is producing along with Italy’s Eliseo Entertainment, which also co-produced “An Officer and a Spy.” Polish filmmaker and Golden Bear winner Jerzy Skolimowski wrote the script, and the film is aiming to begin shooting in the fall.

Italy's Far East Film Festival is making a slight change to the dates for its 2021 edition in order to align with cinemas reopening in the country. The 23rd edition of the specialist festival, highly regarded in Asia, is now set to open on June 24 and close on July 2 and will now include in-person screenings as well as digital elements.

Italy begins its second, and many hope last, reopening of the COVID-19 pandemic.After six months of rotating on-again, off-again closures, restaurants and bars, museums and cinemas, opened to the public in most of the country under a gradual reopening plan that is seen as too cautious for some, too hasty for others.The nation’s weary virologist and health care workers fear that even the tentative reopening laid out by Premier Mario Draghi’s government will invite a free-or-all, signs of which

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentMovie theaters started to gradually reopen in Italy on Monday, serving up Oscar-winning titles such as “Minari” and “Mank” in a fraction of the country’s venues, just as COVID-19 restrictions begin to ease.For the moment, it’s a few mostly arthouse venues in Italy’s biggest cities that are becoming active again, while Italian multiplexes remain closed until mid-May when UCI Cinemas, which is the country’s top exhibitor, has announced they will be back

coronavirus pandemic.Workers doing restoration discovered the frescoes dating from the 17th and 18th centuries beneath plaster in the museum's west wing, which is where the visitor entrance will be when the Uffizi opens to the public.Uffizi director Eike Schmidt said the new entrance facing the Arno River would provide “a glorious introduction” for visitors.The reopening date is not yet certain.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItalian author Antonio Dikele Distefano, who grew up in the northern Italian city of Ravenna, is the originator of new Netflix Original series “Zero,” which marks the first series centered around the present-day lives of Black Italian youth.

Italy.While Asian and Black activists took to social media to share their experiences with racism growing up in Italy, including how it can be fomented by satire, the TV hosts at the center of the uproar said Thursday they have been subjected to a “wave of hatred,” including death threats.Michelle Hunziker and Gerry Scotti, hosts of the satirical show “Striscia la Notizia” (“The News Crawls”) on the private Mediaset network, apologized for the sketch during which they made slanted-eye gestures

EXCLUSIVE: Italy’s Royal House of Savoy is getting the film and TV treatment from Chinese director, writer and producer Yi Zhou who is developing both a TV series and feature based on Queen Marie-José.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentAmazon Prime Video this month launched the local version of its comedy show “LOL: Last One Laughing” in Italy where it has rapidly become the most watched title ever on the platform’s Italian service, says Amazon Studio Head of Italian Originals Nicole Morganti who in an exclusive interview with Variety discussed Amazon’s local strategy a little over a year after moving into Italy with a multi-genre slate. Edited excerpts.Thanks.

EXCLUSIVE: Universal executive Xavier Albert, who has been Managing Director for France since 2016, is taking on a dual market role with the studio and will also become Managing Director for Italy. Albert will take over the post from Richard Borg who is retiring in July after 30 years with the Universal Pictures International organization.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItaly’s 3zero2 shingle, which is a co-producer of Brendan Foley’s pan-European noir “Body of Water,” is ramping up and expanding into film after bringing on board producer Giuseppe Saccà who shepherded Berlin prizewinning drama “Bad Tales.”The Milan-based outfit founded and headed by veteran TV exec Piero Crispino (pictured, left) has been quietly gaining prominence in Italy in the kids’ space by producing shows for Disney that have travelled

EXCLUSIVE: Arthouse streamer and theatrical distributor MUBI has acquired all rights to Sundance documentary Faya Dayi in the UK and Ireland, Latin America, Italy, France, Germany, Turkey and India.

Italy is in a coronavirus lockdown, with live music and theatrical performances barred, cinemas shuttered and many sporting activities limited, competitive ballroom dancing is alive and well here, albeit with precautions.The couples at the New Dancing Days hall are preparing for the Italian Championships in Rimini in July and as such are allowed to keep practicing, given that the government considers their activity in the national interest.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItaly has officially abolished film censorship by scrapping legislation that since 1913 has allowed the government to censor scenes and ban movies such as, most famously, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom” and Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango in Paris.”The move — which is symbolically important, though censorship is de-facto no longer practiced — definitively does away with “the system of controls and interventions that still allowed