21/10/2002 - After being released the world over - Australia, Benelux, China, Germany, Scandinavia and South Africa - the film by Dutch director Franz Weizs and set on the eve of the 20th century, reaches Italy

The year is 1899 and the place is the resort of Bagni di Lucca, where a young Dutch woman who was widowed twelve months earlier has come to recover from an emotional illness that has gradually degenerated into a physical ailment.
That is the opening that Dutch director Frans Weizs chose for his latest film, A Woman of the North, based on a novel entitled “Sulla Via della Gioia” (On the Road to Joy) by Louis Couperous. The movie was co-produced by Enzo Porcelli’s Alia Film and Holland’s René Seegers’ Hungry Eye Lowland.
"Couperous is the Dutch literary equivalent of Italy’s Alessandro Manzoni,” explains Porcelli. “Although the film was completed in 1998, it is only about to be released in Italy now because of distribution problems. Sharada will distribute A Woman of the North onto three screens in Milan, Rome and Bologna on Friday 18 October."
Since its completion, A Woman of the North has been seen in numerous territories around the world including South Africa, Benelux, Australia, Germany and Scandinavia. After being screened at the Shanghai Festival, Chinese state television bought the film. “This sale surpassed all our expectations because the Chinese tend to buy between 15 and 20 European films annually, but most of all they buy American ones,” explained Porcelli.
The cast includes Johanna Ter Steege (Emily), Anthony Calf, Massimo Ghini, Alessandro Haber and Pamela Villoresi, who said, “Emily is an archetypal early feminist:a woman who at the turn of the 20th century faces the social stigma of living with a man she is not married to and having a child out of wedlock. Emily tells herself that this is the life she chose: it was not an imposition. This film is about people, but is also an inspirational story. I don’t know why we Italians don’t make films that are based on our literary classics.”