Mario Martone’s Cannes competition title Nostalgia has been selected to represent Italy in the Best International Feature Film category at the Oscars.
Based on the book of the same name by Ermanno Rea and written by Martone with Ippolita Di Maio, the film follows Felice Lasco, played by Pierfrancesco Favino, who, after living 40 years abroad, returns to Naples and discovers again places and codes of the city, facing a past that eats him away.
Additional cast includes Francesco Di Leva, Tommaso Ragno, and Aurora Quattrocchi. Picomedia, Mad Entertainment in association with Medusa Film. It’s a co-production with Rosebud Entertainment Pictures. The film was released in Italy via Medusa in May.
The film also marked Martone’s return to the Cannes competition section 27 years after his adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s Troubling Love played on the Croisette in 1995. The Naples native also screened The Scent Of Blood in Directors’ Fortnight in 2004.
In a review of the film, Deadline said: “The Italian director splashes his teaming, boisterous, unruly native city of Naples across the screen in fulsome fashion in telling the story of a man who left as a teenager but, some 40 years later, is drawn back into its sinister embrace.”
Here are the International Oscar entries so far:
