Sicilia!

Huillet-Straub’s films have always revolved around despaired characters resigned to their tragic fate. Not so in Sicilia! – an adaptation of Elio Vittorini’s anti-fascist novel Conversations in Sicily, the working class are warm, hopeful and ruggedly defiant. Returning from New York to his Sicilian hometown, Silvestro runs into struggling fruit-growers and sleazy policemen. But his resilient mother’s recollections of her fight for her independence brighten up even the tarred interiors of the family home, and the burgeoning solidarity between Silvestro and the local knife-grinder – unfolding in the over a sing-song conversation – would tear at the cynic’s heartstrings. Influenced by, among others, Mizoguchi Kenji and in turn a touchstone for cineastes like Pedro Costa, Sicilia! is at once a visual poetry and a political dynamite. Screening with The Bridegroom, the Comedienne and the Pimp.

Cannes Film Festival: Un Certain Regard Section`

Cahier du Cinéma Top Ten: #3