David Awards 2012: the nominations

by Camillo De Marco

12/04/2012 - In competition for this year’s David di Donatello Award, on Friday, May 4, at Rome’s Auditorium Conciliazione, are the five films that between 2011 and the beginning of 2012 have brought prestige and given new life to Italian cinema world-wide: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s Caesar Must Die [trailer, film focus], Golden Bear at last February’s Berlinale; Nanni Moretti’s We Have A Pope [trailer, film focus]; Emanuele Crialese’s Terraferma [trailer, film focus], Jury’s Special Prize at the Venice Film Festival; Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must Be the Place [trailer, film focus], laso selected in competition at Cannes and well-received by the critics; Marco Tullio Giordana’s Romanzo di una strage [trailer], a film which has been generating heated debates for weeks.

Four out of five candidates announced in a press conference today are co-produced and distributed by the public service, Rai Cinemaand 01 Distribution, which has won a record number of nominations, sixteen, in the various categories, including Best Director for Ferzan Ozpetek for Magnifica presenza [trailer]. "This goes to show the variety and quality of our production choices: from great political cinema, to good quality comedies, all the way to the discovery of surprising new talent", said Paolo Del Brocco, Managing Director of Cinema.

At the opposite end is the giant Medusa, which consoles itself with the nomination for Sorrentino’s film.

Among new directors, the 1,000 plus members of the Academy have chosen five, all of very high quality: Stefano Sollima for Acab [trailer, film focus], Francesco Bruni for Scialla! [trailer], Alice Rohrwacher for Corpo Celeste [trailer, film focus], Guido Lombardi for Là-bas [trailer, film focus] and Andrea Segre for I am Li [trailer, film focus].

Selected for the award for Best EU Film are Roman Polanski’s Carnage [trailer] (distributed by Medusa Film), Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia [trailer, film focus] (Bim), Aki Kaurismaki’s Le Havre [trailer, film focus] (Bim), Olivier Nakache e Eric Toledano’s The Intouchables (Medusa Film), Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist [trailer, film focus] (Bim). While the Foreign Film category features Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (01Distribution), Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (01 Distribution), George Clooney’s The Ides of March (01 Distribution), Terrence Malick’s The Tree Of Life (01 Distribution), Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation (Sacher Distribuzione).

Finally, the winners of the sections dedicated to shorts and documentaries have been announced. Of the 6 shorts selected out of 90, the winner is Simone Massi’s Dell'ammazzare il maiale, while of the 6 documentaries chosen out of 120 selected, Stefano Savona’s film, Tahrir Liberation Square, won the David di Donatello.

(Translated from Italian)