For release: March 12, 2013
For press information, contact Cosetta Gaudenzi, 901-678-2504

The Italian Program of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Memphis will host its third annual Italian Film Festival March 26 and 28 and April 2. All screenings will begin at 7 p.m. in the University Center Theatre. The festival is free and open to the public.

The schedule features new Italian films, with dialogue spoken in Italian (with English subtitles) that convey an authentic idea of life and culture in contemporary Italy. The films and their dates are:

• Tuesday, March 26 – Il giorno in più

• Thursday, March 28 – La nave dolce

• Tuesday, April 2 –  Cesare deve morire

This year’s selections include three of the most acclaimed recent releases of Italian cinema – a romantic comedy, Il giorno in più (One Day More), based on the bestselling novel by leading actor Fabio Volo, and two award-winning movies from 2012. Daniele Vicari’s La nave dolce (The Human Cargo) documents the onset of Mediterranean migrations to Italy with the 1991 arrival in the coastal city of Bari of 20,000 Albanians aboard the hijacked ship Vlora. Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s Cesare deve morire (Caesar Must Die), which won the Golden Bear at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival, was made in Rome’s Rebibbia high-security prison and follows the inmates’ staging of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and the transforming impact of art on their lives. The festival is made possible by the support of Italian Film Festival USA, the University of Memphis, the Italian Culture Institute of Chicago, and the Memphis Chapter of UNICO.Paid parking is available in the Zach Curlin garage adjacent to the University Center.