Visuali Italiane: Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia to open Bucharest edition of festival dedicated to Italian cinema

Twelve recent Italian productions will be screened at this year’s edition of Visuali Italiane, the festival taking place in Bucharest and five other cities in the country.

This year’s selection, curated by Eddie Bertozzi, highlights a variety of genres, styles, and perspectives in contemporary Italian cinema, as well as classic productions.

The films offer an incursion into diverse spaces and eras, “from cities filled with history to intimate, domestic, or marginal settings, outlining an image of today's Italian cinema focused on people, contexts, and the transformations of the contemporary world,” the organizers explained.

The Bucharest edition of the event will open on March 2 with Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, starring Toni Servillo, “the actor who has become a central figure in the director’s cinematic world.” The film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, earned Servillo the Coppa Volpi for Best Actor.

“The 2026 selection brings together different voices, styles, and sensibilities of contemporary Italian cinema in a program that speaks of people, relationships, and changing worlds. Visuali Italiane remains a space for discovery, where films are meant to be experienced together in an open and inquisitive framework,” said Laura Napolitano, director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Bucharest.

The festival will take place in Bucharest between March 2 and March 8 at the Peasant Museum Cinema; in Cluj between March 12 and March 15 at Cinema Victoria; in Brașov on March 21 and 22 at Cinema Modern; in Iași on March 21 and 22 at Cinema Ateneu; in Craiova between March 27 and March 29 at Cinema Inspire; and in Timișoara between March 27 and March 29 at Cinema Studio. It will also feature a dedicated section at the ESTE Film Festival in Sibiu.

(Photo: La Grazia still by Andrea Pirrello, courtesy of the organizers)