Italian Film Festival - Happy As Lazzaro

Alice Rohrwacher’s beautiful and mysterious film Happy As Lazzaro flowers into something inexpressibly moving, yet also disturbing and unaccountable.

It is a pastoral enigma, and a satirical attack on exploitative feudal snobbery that may be closer to Italy’s present day than is widely assumed – and also a tale of reincarnation or time travel whose hero is a cross between two figures from the Bible: Lazarus and the Christ Child.

Intriguingly, the director has revealed it is inspired by a newspaper story she remembers seeing some years ago. I would love to see a documentary, tracking down specifics.

Winner Best Screenplay, Cannes Film Festival 2018.