Il Cerchio (The Circle)

Dir. Sophie Chiarello, 2022, 108 minutes

Winner of the David di Donatello — Italy’s most prestigious cinema award — for Best Documentary in 2023, this film follows the often disarming, often urgent perspectives of a diverse group of children in a Rome elementary school from first to fifth grade. “Circle time” is when these children regularly gather with their teacher to share their dreams, their hopes, their anxieties, and their often complex family lives. Through Chiarello’s gaze — at once loving and unsentimental — the film offers a revealing vision of both the promises and the challenges of Italy today.

Sophie Chiarello in attendance!

Friday, March 27, 4 p.m.
Camp Concert Hall, Modlin Center for the Arts

Météors

Dir. Hubert Charuel, 2025, 107 minutes

Presented in the prestigious category Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2025, Météors follows three friends in Saint-Dizier, a town in eastern France in a no-man’s land plagued by deindustrialization and unemployment. Tony has built a life in construction; Mika and Dan have not been so lucky. After a run-in with the law, the two end up working for Tony at a nuclear waste site — a last chance that may also be a point of no return. Blending social realism with touches of genre, the film offers a raw and deeply moving portrait of friendship, toxic attachments, addiction, and the possibility of redemption.

Friday, March 27, 7:30 p.m.
Camp Concert Hall, Modlin Center for the Arts

The Battle of Algiers

Dir. Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966, 121 minutes

Widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, The Battle of Algiers reconstructs the resistance and insurgency that shook the capital of French Algeria between 1954 and 1957, during the Algerian War of Independence. Shot in black and white, the film employs documentary-style editing to heighten its sense of immediacy and historical authenticity, while relying largely on nonprofessional actors, some of whom had participated in the urban guerrilla warfare in Algiers. It has often been linked to the tradition of Italian neorealism. Restored by Cinecittà and Cineteca di Bologna.

Saturday, March 28, 4 p.m.
Ukrop Auditorium, Robins School of Business

Napoli–New York

Dir. Gabriele Salvatores, 2024, 124 minutes

From the acclaimed director of Mediterraneo, this film is partly based on an unpublished story by Federico Fellini and Tullio Pinelli, recovered from Pinelli’s papers and later edited by Prof. Augusto Sainati. Set in the immediate postwar period, Napoli-New York tells the story of two destitute children from Naples who make their way to America in search of a new beginning, blending hardship and wonder in a poignant reflection on migration, resilience, and the longing for a home. The film has been noted for a visual style that moves between realism and fable, pairing the textures of postwar life with a sense of wonder that reflects the children’s journey.

Saturday, March 28, 7 p.m.
Ukrop Auditorium, Robins School of Business

La Grazia (Grace)

Dir. Paolo Sorrentino, 2025, 133 minutes

Academy Award–winning director Paolo Sorrentino, whose The Great Beauty won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, brings his distinctive style to La Grazia, a meditative drama set in the final stretch of an Italian president’s mandate. As Mariano De Santis weighs questions of clemency, judgment, and conscience, the film takes on a quiet moral gravity. At its center is Toni Servillo, whose prize-winning performance at the Venice Film Festival lends the role a grave, inward intensity, while Sorrentino shapes the story into a reflection on power, solitude, memory, and doubt.

Sunday, March 29, 6 p.m.
Ukrop Auditorium, Robins School of Business