Simone Isola

A story set in the 90s and in the outskirts of Rome to Ostia. A world where money, luxury cars, night clubs, cocaine and synthetic drugs are easy to run. A world in which Vittorio and Cesare, in their early twenties, act in search of their success.

Critical Passion studies the relationship between critics and authors in the history of Italian cinema in relation to the history of the National Union of Italian Film Critics (SNCCI), since its founding act in 1971. It is a non-secondary path in Italian cultural history, traced thanks to the interventions of prestigious witnesses and the editing of archive material, from the 1960s to the advent of the web and social networks and the current explosion of the audiovisual sector, which questions the very definition and boundaries of cinema.

The ostensibly simple story of a sympathetic veteran teacher giving Italian lessons to a weekly class of diverse immigrants is given infinitely more depth and complexity by the manner in which director Daniele Gaglianone renders his story. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and artifice, and between documentary and drama, Gaglianone has created a film within a film. You see the apparent artifice of Gaglianone’s crew using professionals, including the noted film actor Valerio Mastandrea as the teacher, interlinked with ‘real’ immigrant protagonists, studying the language to improve their chances of employment and of gaining a permanent residence permit. Thus in the course of the lessons there is simultaneously the painful and upsetting relation of the students’ personal stories but also humour, as they interact and share their humanity, bridging cultural differences, united in their striving to make a better life for themselves. (Source: LFF programme)

A woman and her 10-year-old son face, in their own way, the mourning for the death of the husband and father, which took place in a factory, while the waiting and the recollection for the day of the funeral grow all around.