Cannes Me and You Io e Te Film Still - H 2012
ROME — The latest projects from a trio of former Oscar winners were among the most nominated films vying for the top honors from Italy’s David di Donatello awards, which announced the nominees for its 57th edition Friday.
Bernardo Bertolucci’s Io e te (Me and You), La migliore offerta (The Best Offer) from Giuseppe Tornatore, and Gabriele Salvatores’ Educazione siberiana (Siberian Education) — Bertolucci, Tornatore, and Salvatores have all directed Oscar winners — were among the films nominated for both Best Film and Best Director. They were joined in both categories by Daniele Vicari, whose drama Diaz, an examination of the bloody end to the 2001 G-8 summit in the Italian city of Genoa, appeared in cinemas more than a year ago, barely too late for it to have qualified for last year’s Donatello honors.
The winners will be announced during a gala ceremony June 14.
In the categories for non-Italian films, Michael Haneke’s Amour headed a class of five films in the running for the Best European Film, while Ben Affleck’s Argo, winner of the Oscar for Best Picture this year, was among the five films in the category for best non-European film.
The fifth nominee in the Best Film category is Viva la liberta (Long Live Liberty), a recently released political drama from Roberto Ando, while Matteo Garrone, for his comedy Reality, was the only person nominated for Best Director honors but who did not see their film nominated in the Best Film category. It was a surprising exclusion for 2012 Cannes Prix du Jury winner Reality, which tells the story of a man obsessed with appearing on a reality television program.
The writers behind Io e te, La migliore offerta, Reality, and Via la liberta all earned nominations in the Best Screenplay category, along with Ivan Cotroneo, Francesca Marciano, and Maria Sole Tognazzi for their work on Viaggio sola (I Travel Alone), which Tognazzi directed.
Best Actress nominees were Valeria Bruni Tedeschi from Via la liberta, Margherita Buy from Viaggio sola, Io e te star Tea Falco, Jasmine Trinca for Un giorno devi andare (One Day You Should Go), and Federica Victoria Caiozzo from Tutti I santi giorni (Every Holy Day).
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Reality star Aniello Arena was among the Best Actor nominees, which also included Toni Servillo from Viva la liberta, Luca Marinelli from Tutti I santi giorni, Una famiglia perfetta (A Perfect Family) star Sergio Castellito, Roberto Herlitzka from Il rosso e il blu (The Red and the Blue), and Valerio Mastandrea from Ivan De Matteo’s drama Gli equilibristi (The Acrobats).
Ennio Morricone, for his work on La migliore offerta, led the class of five nominees in the Best Music category, along with Alexandre Desplat for Reality, Mauro Pagani for Educazione siberiana, Teho Teadaro for Diaz, and Franco Piersanti for Io e te.
In addition to Amour, the nominees for Best European Film were 007 Skyfall from Sam Mendes, Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina, Quartet from Dustin Hoffman, and Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone.
All the films in the Best Non-European Film category were Best Picture nominees at the Oscars: Quentin Tarantino’s spaghetti Western homage Django Unchained, Silver Linings Playbook from David O. Russell, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, and Life of Pi from Ang Lee, along with Argo.
The full list of nominees is available from the Donatello website.
Bertolucci’s Io e te tells the story of an introverted teenager who hides at home after telling his parents he was leaving on a ski trip, while La migliore offerta from Tornatore is about an art auctioneer’s obsession with an heiress. Salvatores’ Educazione siberiana is a coming-of-age memoir set in a remote community in the breakaway Republic of Transnistria, between Moldova and Ukraine. All three actors have directed Oscar-winning films in the past: Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor won nine Oscars in 1988; and Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso and Salvatores’s Mediterraneo won the Best Foreign Language Oscars in 1990 and 1992, respectively.
Twitter: @EricJLyman
