The Rossellinis

Director: Alessandro Rossellini
Year: 2020
Duration: 90’
Country: Italy, Latvia
Language: English, Italian
Category: Family/Whānau
Category Sponsor: RNZ
Topics: Arts and Culture, Family

Other Festivals: Venice International Film Critics' Week, Visions du Réel, Hotdocs

A famous film family that is the very definition of drama.

Roberto Rossellini, the most famous film director of Italian Neorealism, was a genius of cinema and a conspicuously unconventional father. His love stories have flooded the front pages of newspapers all over the planet, scandalising the rigid morality of the 1950s, and bringing to the world a large, proudly multi-ethnic and definitely extended family. Alessandro, the first grandson of the great director, had a shaky career as a photographer and a long history of drug addiction. As the first grandson of a genius, he doesn’t feel he is living up to his surname. So, he decides to shoot his first film at 55, with self-conscious wit and irony, forcing his family to an impossible therapy session in front of the camera.

The film’s conversations are full of interesting insights into their relationships, revealing old disagreements, tragic moments in their lives, surprising anecdotes, but also good feelings.
Davide Abbatescianni, Cineuropa