Cinema: ‘Nostalgia’ best European film at Capri Hollywood festival

ANSA ROME – Mario Martone’s Naples mob drama “Nostalgia,” Italy’s candidate for next year’s Oscars, has been selected as European film of the year by the annual Capri, Hollywood International Film Festival. The film, which won four Silver Ribbons from Italian film critics in June including best director, best actor, best supporting actor, and best screenplay, stars Pierfrancesco Favino as a Naples man who returns to his hometown after 40 years in Egypt and reconnects with a child-hood friend who has become a Camorra boss.

The board of the Capri Hollywood fest, which opens the international film fest season on Dec. 26, selected “Nostalgia” because it is a “precious and poetic work,” said honorary chair Noa, the Israeli singer who has longstanding ties to Naples and its culture.

A short list of 21 candidates for the International Feature Film Award at the 95th Academy Awards on March 12 next year will be unveiled on Dec. 21.

The five nominations will be announced on Jan. 24.

Italo-American actor and director John Turturro will show the film, adapted from Ermanno Rea’s 2016 novel of the same name, in New York before doing the rounds of the pre-Oscar festivals.