Giorgio Diritti Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent U.S. specialty distributor Shadow Distribution has taken North American rights to Italian director Giorgio Diritti’s ethnic cleansing drama “Lubo,” toplining Franz Rogowski, from Italy’s True Colours.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Vuelta Group, the rising Paris-based European film studio which recently launched with the high profile acquisitions of France’s Playtime, Germany’s SquareOne and Scandinavia’s Scanbox, is expanding its footprint in Italy and France. Spearheaded by media finance veterans (and childhood friends) Jerome Levy and David Atlan-Jackson, Vuelta has bought Indiana Production, a leading Italian company founded by Benedetto Habib and Marco Cohen, which had Giorgio Diritti’s “Lubo” playing in competition Venice and just revealed its big-budget Netflix series project “The Leopard” and Sky’s “Unwanted.” Vuelta has also taken a stake in France’s Pan (formerly called Pan-Europeenne), the well-established production and distribution banner headed by Nathalie Gastaldo, Philippe Godeau and Camille Gentet, whose credits include the hit franchises “Largo Winch” and “Legendaries.” Vuelta Group bowed last year with more $100 million provided by a U.S.

Clean, green Switzerland, land of chocolate, cuckoo clocks and direct democracy, is revealed to have a history of racial abuse as ugly as any other in Giorgio Diritti’s rolling epic Lubo, showing in competition at the Venice Film Festival. German actor Franz Rogowski plays the title character, a street performer and paterfamilias who is part of Switzerland’s community of Jenisch, a nomadic people originating in Germany. Lubo’s story is a dramatically terrible one – his wife is killed in a spat with heavy-handed police and his children are taken away, all while he is being marched off to serve time in the army – but it speaks to the truth.

Jessica Kiang For around half of the entire last century, there was a semi-official policy enacted by the Swiss state to forcibly separate the children of “itinerant” parents from their families. The program, known as “Kinder der Landstrasse” (“Children of the Road”), was ostensibly designed for the protection of such children from the perils of vagrancy and criminality which the state imagined rife among the traveller population.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Prominent arthouse sales company The Match Factory has closed multiple sales on Italian auteur Gianni Amelio’s Venice competition title “Lord of the Ants” ahead of its Venice premiere on Tuesday. The Match Factory has sealed deals on Amelio’s latest work – which is a biopic of Italian poet, playwright and director Aldo Braibanti, who was jailed in 1968 due to a Fascist-era anti-gay law – that will ensure the film’s theatrical release in: Australia/New Zealand (Palace Films); Japan (Zazie Films); Spain (Surtsey Films); Sweden (TriArt Film) and Greece (Ama Films). Further deals are in negotiation, the company said. Braibanti was convicted after a complaint from his partner’s father, who later forced his son to be treated with electroconvulsive therapy in an ill-conceived attempt to rid him of his homosexuality. The Fascist-era law that punished Braibanti, which made it a crime to lead innocent or unwary people “morally” astray, was repealed in 1981.

Italy’s David di Donatello Winners Winners have been crowned for the 21 David di Donatello awards, the Italian film awards ceremony. Hidden Away, Giorgio Diritti’s drama about Italian painter Antonio Ligabue, won Best Film and Director.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItaly’s 66th David di Donatello Awards are set to celebrate on May 11 a year of resilience for Cinema Italiano that also looks likely to germinate some creative renewal, just as Italian movie theaters start to reopen and production is booming.Giorgio Diritti’s biopic “Hidden Away,” about crazed primitivist painter Antonio Ligabue, Gianni Amelio’s wistful “Hammamet,” which reconstructs the Tunisian self-exile of scandal-plagued Italian leader Bettino

Giorgio Diritti, considered the film poet of northern Italy after his stark first feature The Wind Blows Round (2005) set in the Occitane Alps won him awards and acclaim, sets his sights high in the ambitious and impressiveHidden Away(Volevo nascondermi). It may well be the definitive biopic of Antonio Ligabue, Italy’s celebrated Naïve painter and sculptor, whose unfortunate story comes roaring to life.

Giorgio Diritti, considered the film poet of northern Italy after his stark first feature The Wind Blows Round (2005) set in the Occitane Alps won him awards and acclaim, sets his sights high in the ambitious and impressiveHidden Away(Volevo nascondermi). It may well be the definitive biopic of Antonio Ligabue, Italy’s celebrated Naïve painter and sculptor, whose unfortunate story comes roaring to life.

Variety has been given an exclusive clip from Berlin Film Festival competition film “Volevo Nascondermi” (Hidden Away) by Giorgio Diritti. The film stars Cannes award-winner Elio Germano (“La nostra vita”) as the 20th century Naïve artist Antonio Ligabue.