Night

Italian Film Festival + Greek Film Festival 2025

1. Nyhterinos ekfonitis | Athens Midnight Radio (2024) Greece, Directed by Renos Haralambidis
2. La grazia (2025) Italy, Directed by Paolo Sorrentino
3. Il tempo che ci vuole | The Time it Takes (2024) Italy | France, Directed by Francesca Comencini

Il tempo che ci vuole | The Time it Takes 

Deeply personal and infinitely magical, The Time it Takes is a poetic reflection on childhood and parenthood, life and living life. The exploration of the precious time spent with her father, Luigi, writer-director Francesca Comencini, provides a fictionalised version of their story, unvarnished. From their enchanted beginning when she was still a young girl on the film set of her father’s television series, The Adventures of Pinocchio in 1972, to the trackless and problematic years as drug-dependent teen when Luigi’s also experienced his first onset of Parkinson’s disease which eventually brought about his death in 2007, and finally coming full-circle with Francesca becoming a single mother and a successful film director in her own right. This film is an homage to her father, Luigi Comencini, a well-known post-war Italian director, and a love story to the redemptive and healing powers of cinema. The title is like an epitaph, that speaks of the time it takes for any relationship to flourish, riding the rough patches with the golden hours, shared glories and failures, all of life’s ups and downs; and signals, also, to the time needed, a certain distance, and maturation of Francesca, to find her voice, so that she can tell their story. 

I first saw this film in our hotel room in Milan this year in May. Without knowing any Italian, the lyrical lines in the script were lost, but not so, the sensitive and courageous performances of Romana Maggiora Vergano as the troubled teenage / adult Francesca and the wonderfully enigmatic Fabrizio Gifuni, who portrayed, with acuity, the sharp-eyed intellectual, and gradually-aging father, Luigi. In fact, the spark between these two actors and their shared love for each other was palpable, there was something incredibly tender and vulnerable between them that required no words. 

The second time I saw this film, only a few months later, was on the big screen, and the experience was deeply affecting – it has so much heart, and just the right amount of whimsy. The fact that there seemed to be no other siblings or adults in the life of this father and daughter duo is what is to be loved about this film. You enter into what is purely their world – this cocoon that can sometimes get a little claustrophobic. But regardless, it is a universe of make believe – from the moment  that young Francesca (Anna Mangiocavallo) was on the set of his father’s shoots, the illusory world of cinema unfolds in the eyes of an 8 year old: dreamic, fantastical, pure magic, where everything is larger than life, and all things are possible. Their story parallels that of The Adventures of Pinocchio, (in real life, Luigi’s reminiscence of his time spent on the shoot, which lasted over the course of a year, was recalled, in one of his last interviews, as his happiest in his entire life), with all the trials and tribulations that came to Pinocchio, and so too, for Francesca, as she entered into adulthood and lived the meaning of rebellion. 

Against all that held her fascination as a child: her father’s world of classical music and books, his drive to be productive, his fierce intellect; all propelled Francesca’s need for escape. Her first experiences of love and then drugs came with the drive in the seventies where ‘everything about rock n roll is about death’. Some of these scenes were beautifully accentuated by Neil Young‘s sweet and tender vocals to Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black). Pushed further towards the abyss with the death of her lover, Luigi had little choice but to take her away to Paris to ‘dry out’. These turbulent times were mirrored by Italy’s destabilising ‘years of lead’, between the late 60s and the late 80s when the whole country was marked by a wave of social and political unrest. When I was watching the film, I cannot help but recall the brilliant but tough television series Exterior Night (2022) directed by Marco Bellocchio, where Gifuni was Aldo Moro – he portrayed Moro’s tragic and shocking demise with grave sensitivity. Small fragments of this other character haunted Comencini’s film, likely intentional, a clever piece of casting either way. 

As troubling as this may sound, perhaps the best scenes in the film were the most difficult ones…Luigi’s dependence on drugs to keep Parkinson’s disease at bay and Francesca’s dependence on drugs because she was an addict. Yet neither yielded to their weaknesses. In these scenes, those wretched scenes outside the bathroom door, the close-up of Vergano’s puffy face and shadowed eyes, where we glimpse a knife’s edge excising the emotional artery, are but transcendent, of rare grace.

Then, the tender scenes in Paris where the weakened Luigi, his body wrecked by the disease that will eventually take his life, trails behind Francesca. He is her shadow, her protector, following her to the ends of the earth, even if they are to be swallowed by a whale (the monster within us). Luca Bigazzi’s cinematography treads a careful balance between private and public worlds.

At its core, this film reinvents the filial relationship in the tradition of Pinocchio, there, between father and son, here, between father and daughter. And so it should be the case. Luigi had four daughters by his wife, Guilia: Paola, who is a costumier cum production designer and had worked on all his films since 1980 (in fact all his daughters had trained under him); Eleonora who is a producer; Cristina and Francesca, both of whom assisted their father at film sets, and both established directors in their own right. 

It matters little whether or not you knew of the real-life father-daughter pair, in fact, all this is of no consequence…because ultimately, this film is a poem, it is a poem about life. Its working title was First Life, Then Cinema, and Francesca’s delicate tribute to life (and cinema) was not lost on us.

A lovely review of Comencini’s film in Italian (you can use Google translate on the page) begins with a quote by Giovanni Pascoli’s famous essay on fanciullino or the little child – where he described how poetry (and here, cinema) should be sought with a sense of amazement and wonder, like that of a little child’s…and that there is an inner child in all of us, even the bankers or politicians, and for us to rediscover that sense of spontaneous mystery in all things. 

What a beautiful reminder to us all…

The Italian Film Festival ran in September and October in Australia this year.

The Greek Film Festival ran in October in Australia this year.

Look back on the first two instalments, on Athens Midnight Radio by director Renos Haralambidis and La Grazia by director Paolo Sorrentino.

1. Nyhterinos ekfonitis | Athens Midnight Radio (2024) Greece, Directed by Renos Haralambidis
2. La grazia (2025) Italy, Directed by Paolo Sorrentino
3. Il tempo che ci vuole|The Time it Takes (2024) Italy | France, Directed by Francesca Comencini

Italian Film Festival + Greek Film Festival 2025

La grazia

Paolo Sorrentino’s La grazia was the second film I saw at this year’s Italian Film Festival. It was also the only film that was advertised on the site without a trailer (some weird AI-generated trailer was available upon searching on YouTube – but you could smell its fishy falsity within a couple of seconds) and the singular marketing I managed to find at the time, was an image of the back of the great Toni Servillo (Sorrentino’s chameleonic long-term collaborator), dressed formally in a black coat and hat, standing looking sideways on what looks to be a country road that leads somewhere into the distance. His gaze unseen by us, his face, in a half profile, yielded little expression, at least none that can be easily deciphered. Even the 20 word blurb gave nothing away. I entered the theatre with only a hastily glanced meaning of the words la grazia in mind.

La grazia is a word that describes not only the translation any English-speaking person would discern upon seeing the word – grace. Its variation in usage and meaning yields a complex but well-rounded description of Sorrentino’s elegant film (note he was also the writer of this film). The word signals multiple meanings concurrently: 1. Favour or benevolence in the form of goodwill; 2. Gratitude – in its signifying of thankfulness or a blessing; 3. Also, it conveys the idea of pardon or mercy in a legal sense, of clemency or formal pardon granted by the head of state; and lastly, 4. The spiritual beneficence of divine favour – where a state of grace is attained.

Just like a modern-day sorcerer, Sorrentino weaves these elements together into the life-taspestry of Servillo’s Italian President, Mariano de Santis, who is serving out the last 6 months of his 7 year term. His daughter, Dorotea (Ana Ferzetti) runs a tight schedule for him, right down to what he is allowed to eat, (something like boiled fish and potatoes), so as to keep his weight off; a somewhat sardonic recurring theme: the president’s envy of the weightlessness of an astronaut who also has 6 months before returning to earth, and the president’s own earnt nickname of ‘reinforced concrete’ – conjuring a visual image of a slab of that heavy but dull, grey material; but really, this description is in context to his dogmatism in carrying out duties to the letter of the law. 

And so, his days passed, not unkindly, like that of a groundhog, where one day blends into the next; where history weighs him down and the future is but an abyss, a void eternal in which he must surrender. Sometimes when he is up on the roof top of his residence, we couldn’t help but wonder whether he would leap off its parapet. 

In an echo of the eternal city where he lives, eternity is measured by the stretch of his inability to act on (seemingly) just three things: 1. To put his signature to an euthanesia bill that his daughter has prepared; 2. The decision of whether to grant pardon to a woman who has murdered her abusive husband; and 3. Whether or not to grant pardon to a man who had ended his wife’s suffering from Alzheimer’s. If we go back to the marketing still for this film, we now know that, despite the straight road that leads ahead, de Santis had turned his head to the side, and in doing so, he is offering up to himself, a different choice, a diverting path to take (somewhere off-frame). And this is how he has to navigate what remains of his term and what remains of his life – the loss of his wife, his knowledge that she has cheated on him at a much earlier juncture of their marriage, and the three things of his governance weighed on him (no amount of dieting would alleviate his heavy burden).

But there are light-hearted moments too: in the form of his larger than life friend, Coco Valori, played here with unforgettable flair and vibrancy by Milvia Marigliano delivers to the camera a rich Fellinesque jewel that Sorrentino reveres. Other moments of hilarity come in the form of Chaplinesque caper: the red-carpeted arrival of the Portuguese prime minister, majestically broken by a sudden rain storm – all in exquisite multi-angled slow motion for our visual enjoyment – a mockery of the absurdity of formalities. Working with his long-term collaborator, Daria D’Antonio, at the helm of the camera, providing just the right amount of comedy to offset the gravity of Mariano’s decisions. We mustn’t forget to mention de Santis’ new penchant for listening to rap music in the evenings on his headphones, seated in the official cabinet’s leather and dark wood office – just when you think any seriousness was checked at the door – Sorrentino raps, to camera, perfectly. In fact, the pulsing techno music that recurs throughout the film acts as that needlepoint of balance on a scale – tipping sometimes to enjoyment, sometimes to endurance; a metaphor for one’s moral compass: the unyielding oscillation between doubt and certainty, right or wrong.

In Sorrentino’s 2024 Parthenope, a film I regard as the writer/director’s best work (sadly my sentiment was not shared by critics), he posed this question: “what happens if you just let go?” – a profound and deeply troubling question, as most people desperately cling onto whatever they deem to be important, when really, nothing is as vital as it may seem – good looks, what other people think of you, the millstone around your neck (unless you’re one of the handful of fortunates who love your job), politics and government, social media, or things you simply can’t change. Who dares to live authentically as themselves these days (despite loud pronouncements of this achievement)? And here in La grazia, the question asked is a simpler one, but no less weighty: “who owns our days?”, a follow-up question of the former. If there is a right answer to this question, does it make it true to your current situation? For me, the dual questions posed by Sorrentino continue to linger long after the film ends. 

La grazia won 7 awards at the 82nd Venice Film Festival with Servillo taking the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. 

An interesting interview with the director at the 63rd New York Film Festival is available here.

The Italian Film Festival ran in September and October in Australia this year.

The Greek Film Festival ran in October in Australia this year.

Look back on the first instalment, on Athens Midnight Radio by director Renos Haralambidis

Look out for the next and final instalment, on The Time it Takes by director Francesca Comencini.

Italian Film Festival + Greek Film Festival 2025

1. Nyhterinos ekfonitis | Athens Midnight Radio (2024) Greece, Directed by Renos Haralambidis
2. La grazia (2025) Italy, Directed by Paolo Sorrentino
3. Il tempo che ci vuole | The Time it Takes (2024) Italy | France, Directed by Francesca Comencini

The voyage back from the far side of a metaphoric world had taken almost a year through a fogged maze of days and hours undone. Throughout, I have been an impersonator of the small-spirited and bumbling adventurer Phileas Fogg (courtesy of a recent viewing of the comic and alarming meteoric talent of one David Tennant), and suffice to say, it was not only in name that we were equals. This year of quiet unassuming mourning where films were watched unnoticed, passed me by with a meandering haze of interceding narratives that neither yielded joy nor nostalgia. In fact, I had not noticed much but for a lack of appetite.

The Italian Film Festival changed all that. Maybe it was time, too. I had selected more than seven films to be watched (managing only three in the end), I did, however, include the great Visconti’s Death in Venice (1971) in the same season – this other film, newly restored, was screening at the Ritz in Randwick and nicely complemented the three films. And ending this period of weekend film-going with a poetic, lyrical and infinitely beautiful film from the Greek Film Festival (first time attendee to this one), Athens Midnight Radio. And it is with this film – and the end of my chapter of disquiet – where I shall begin.

🎥 Nyhterinos ekfonitis| Athens Midnight Radio

Written and directed by Renos Haralambidis, Renos was also the main protagonist in the film, a lovelorn late night radio announcer who is about to celebrate his fiftieth birthday on air. This film is pretty much a one-hander and Haralambidis carries it off magnificently. Part recollection, part reflection, on the unrelenting onset of time; this is the announcer’s call into the darkness – for a return to love, to youth, and perhaps to the better days already missed, those long gone years. With this, he has cast a message in a bottle, and set it adrift in a vast ocean of the unknown. His one wish – to be reunited, on air, off air, into the distance of the night – with a love he’d let go a long time ago. He has given her the duration of his session to get back in contact, to call in if she happens to be listening. So this night is a story crafted in memories of his youth, where the city’s glorious ancient monuments, tokens of his lover’s meeting spots, and the music, a nostalgic signalling of lost days – many beautiful pieces, especially the repeated aria from The Pearl Fishers, Je Crois Entendre Encore (I Think I Hear Again), differently rendered each time. And at each hour, passed-time was marked through its announcement by an analogue tape recording (a hark back to ancient Hellenistic days where the hours of the night were announced via water clocks). 

Contributing to this film’s hypnotic quality is Haralambidis’ sonorous midnight voice, like a confessional, this internal monologue is sometimes punctuated by music, sometimes by callers into the radio station, and sometimes, most memorably, by the recordings of messages left by his lover on his answer phone. In this way, Haralambidis invites us into not only his personal history and desires but also identifies to us his current mood: as a man of nostalgia; we immediately understand that he is a collector of songs, for the messages have a musicality of their own.

The characters, although unnamed (and probably because they are unnamed) made their love story infinitely relatable. The anonymity a city like Athens offers is depicted none more clearly than in the scenes of the midnight marathon runners preparing for their race, the warm up exercises were shown in close-ups: the back of heads (one with headphones in place), fragments of limbs, arms, hands, feet – as though preparing the viewer for those other fragments, sculptures of Greek gods, and monumental ruins like the ever-watchful Acropolis, that featured prominently throughout the film. Kosits Gikas’ cinematography paints the city in slow motion, the quiet city released from tourists and workers commands our eyes, paired with a soundtrack (provided by the radio announcer) demands our ears’ attention too. Even a remembered ‘performance’ from an isolated phone booth brought out a sense of yearning, nostalgic for a youth long gone, for a simpler way of life. 

This film is also Haralambidis’ love story to Athens. As the night paints its stars across the sky, the narrative illuminates and awakens the secrets long buried there. In what seems to be another life, the announcer was once an evzone, part of a light infantry that stands guard at monuments. In recalling its elaborate handover parade, which for me at least, has always been a curious mix of choreography, solemnity and discipline. This sentiment and tone matches perfectly the magnificent, but silent monuments standing sentinels across the city in sleep, where the vanished lover of his youth, a dancer, leaps and twirls across these landscapes. The most touching scenes were those where she had danced in front of him.

First at Syntagma Square in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier where he was stationed, although at the time,  even her beautiful grand jetés were unable to stir his heart. Marking the place where their love story began to unravel. And now, in a dreamscape, and Haralambidis with eyes closed, reclined against the sublime fragments from the East Pediment of the Parthenon, were of Demeter (whose skirts he leant against) and Persephone, and Dionysus nearby, all in a kind of limbo and frozen in action. These replica sculptures located at the Acropolis metro station in Athens are mute, as though their stories, currently voiceless, are asking to be discovered – slow mirage-like sequences where everyday workers pass by these works and the sleeping Haralambidis unseen. Whilst his lover, a ballet dancer, portrayed wonderfully by Eleftheria Stamou, a dancer herself with Greek National Opera Ballet, is as alluring and mysterious as these ancient gods, and as graceful as Athens, her city, especially when dawn breaks.

Does he get to reunite with her? This dream lover? You’ll have to watch the film to find out.

Perhaps the mood and meaning of this film is best described by Haralambidis in his own words: “I always appreciate Athens as a city where you can be in the arms of eternity as trains go by and also amongst the crowds, which come and go, as if indifferent to these surroundings. And it is in the underground of the city’s metro, at the Acropolis metro station where the exhibit of the replicas of the statues of the eastern gable end of the Parthenon, that I discovered the stars for my new film Athens Midnight Radio.”

This quote is from a beautiful short article on the website of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles where Haralambidis speaks eloquently about his film and Athens. 

The Greek Film Festival ran in October in Australia this year.

The Italian Film Festival ran in September and October in Australia this year.

Look out for the next instalment, on La Grazia by director Paolo Sorrentino.