A revisiting of the themes of life, cinema, family ties and guilt, Nanni Moretti’s Mia Madre is a major return to form for the Italian director. Margherita (Margherita Buy) is a director shooting a film with the famous American actor, Barry Huggins (John Turturro), who is quite a headache on set and whose Italian is nowhere near up to par for the demands of his role. Away from the shoot, Margherita tries to hold her life together, despite her mother’s illness and her daughter’s adolescence. Screened to great acclaim in Cannes, Nanni Moretti’s latest work is a seductive and witty biographical blend of comedy and pathos that gets the most from its small ensemble cast. There’s a great anecdote involving working with Kubrick and as a whole the film plays as an affectionate, and sometimes not so affectionate metaphor for choosing a life in cinema.
“★★★★ Mia Madre is warm, witty and seductive: his best film since The Son’s Room, returning him to the themes of cinema, life, family ties and family guilt, though given here a gentler and more lenient view … a tremendously smart and enjoyable movie.” – The Guardian
“★★★★★ Mia Madre is a triumph of tonal complexity. It’s a funny tragedy, a serious comedy, a film about death that has its wake and eats it.” – The Financial Times
“★★★★ Nanni Moretti gets painfully personal with this impeccably judged family drama.” – The Arts Desk
“No surprise that the film earned an eight-minute standing ovation at Cannes.” – BFI Sight and Sound
Want to see if Mia Madre is for you? Tune into our podcast to get the verdict from Jason Wood, our Artistic Director of Film, and AV Supervisor, David Petty (starts 20 seconds in):