FILM FESTIVAL

The Italian Film Festival has taken place at La Scala and Lido Movie Theatre from the 21st to the 27th of June.

This Festival featured the film production of three famous young Italian directors: Matteo Garrone, Paolo Sorrentino and Emanuele Crialese. These filmmakers are among the most promising young filmmakers in Italy today. In their own way, they all follow the tradition of “Italian Neorealism” focusing on different aspects of reality expressed through an original and personal perspective.

The opening film of the Film Festival, Nuovomondo by Emanuele Crialese, offers an original portray of a Sicilian family who decides to move to America in search of a better life. Nuovomondo is an extraordinary allegorical epic that opens in a forsaken corner of Sicily and it closes, after an arduous and colorful passage in third-class steerage, in modern times, on Ellis Island, in the shadow of eugenic testing.

The screening was preceded by the speeches of the Italian Ambassador H.E. Ignazio Di Pace and the Thai directors Tan Mui and Ekachai Uekrongtham, who underlined the importance of such events for the cultural bilateral relations.

This Italian Festival should be just the beginning of a series of projects to promote our movie directors and, hopefully, the Italian Embassy will promote similar Festivals in the future.

The Ambassador of Italy, Ignazio Di Pace, with his wife Helen Di Pace at the opening evening of the Italian Film Festival 2007	Chatrichalerm Yukol having his speech at the opening evening of the Film Festival
	Ekachai Uekrongtham talking about his appreciation of the Italian Cinema