In 2025, the Italian Cultural Institute in Sydney and the Embassy of Italy in Wellington will collaborate for the fifth consecutive year with Cinema Italiano Festival in New Zealand, the New Zealand institution that organizes a film festival focused on contemporary Italian films.
Cinema Italiano Festival, an initiative conceived and created by Paolo Rotondo and Renee Mark, passionate cinephiles, has reached its tenth anniversary. What at the beginning was a limited series with screenings concentrated in a single city, has become in a few years a festival that covers the entire national territory. From Auckland to Wellington, from Christchurch to Whatakane, from Tauranga to Takapuna and then Nelson, Napier, Palmerston, Dunedin, Blenheim, lovers of Italian cinema in Aotearoa will benefit from a current vision of Italian society.
Furthermore, unlike many of the film festivals organized globally, which generally last for a few days, the peculiar feature of this festival is that the screenings take place over a period of seven months, in 20 different cinemas in rotation. This makes “Cinema Italiano Festival” a product accessible to a large number of spectators.
The 2025 program sees over 1000 screenings over the 7-month duration of the festival in a schedule that also includes two productions supported by the Institute: a classic and a movie recently released in cinemas. The first one is the timeless masterpiece The Postman Michael Radford (1994) with Massimo Troisi. The second film is A World Apart (2024) by Riccardo Milani with Antonio Albanese.
The Postman: when Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo
Neruda is exiled to the island of Procida, he captures the attention of the local postman, Mario. The power of language and poetry opens Mario’s mind and expands his horizons, and soon, he wishes to use the newly discovered power of words to woo the beautiful Beatrice.
A World Apart: After 40 years of teaching in a metropolitan Roman school, Michele starts a new life in a remote village high in the Abruzzi Mountains. He must overcome his urban inadequacy, make friends, and embark on a race against time to save the school he comes to love.
Paolo Rotondo is a New Zealand film and theater director, writer and actor. Born in Naples, Italy to a Neapolitan father and a New Zealand mother of Irish descent, he was raised in Italy and moved to New Zealand at the age of eleven. Rotondo is best known for his character Andrew Solomon on the New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street. In 2016, he released his debut film Orphans & Kingdoms to critical acclaim. He was featured in the New Zealand film Stickmen. As a writer Rotondo has written for cinema and theatre.Renee Mark is Māori, from Ngāti Tahu-Ngāti Whaoa in Reporoa, New Zealand. Born to a Maori mother and an Irish father, she grew up in Hawke’s Bay before attending Victoria University of Wellington obtaining a law degree and a double major in Maori and Psychology. In 2003 she was accepted into the Random House Associate Program in New York, in 2007 she was managing director of Te Paepae Ataata – the Māori Film Commission and in 2013 she was one of 12 Aucklanders to receive a position in the prestigious Art Venture – a year-long program of creative enterprise. In 2016 she started the Italian Cinema Festival with her husband Paolo Rotondo. For further information and booking please visit the website: https://www.italianfilmfestivalnz.com/booking
Programme Link: https://heyzine.com/flip-book/193c877c81.html#page/20
