A selection of films screened at the 75th Venice International Film Festival will be shown at the Karo cinema theatres in Moscow. The initiative is the fruit of the cooperation between the Venice Biennale and the Italian Cultural Institute in Moscow. The screenings will run from 20 to 24 February and will show the latest releases of Italian cinema productions and also feature a special event dedicated to Bernardo Bertolucci, who died on 26 November, 2018. The director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Moscow, Olga Strada, described it as “a festival that started off unnoticed in 2010 but has slowly acquired strength from year to year.”
The festival will kick off with the screening of “The Stolen Caravaggio” (“Una storia senza nome”) directed by Roberto Andò. The screenplay is based on a fact that really happened, namely the theft by the mafia of Caravaggio’s Nativity in 1969 from the oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo. The fate of the canvas is still wrapped in mystery and is listed as one of the ten most sought artworks in the world. “It is an intertwining of mafia gangsters, politicians and art dealers that, although it is fiction, appears to be very life-like,” said Director Strada.
