The Italian film director Alice Rohrwacher’s rise to the top has never been more obvious than this week at the Cannes Film Festival. Her third feature film, Happy as Lazzaro, which she wrote and directed, stunned the critics gathered in Cannes for what has been a very strong 71st edition.
A distinctive and yet quiet talent since her first film Corpo Celeste was selected at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight in 2011, followed three years later by her second film The Wonders, Alice Rohwacher has reached, at just 36, a maturity and force that echoes both Pier Paolo Pasolini and Ermanno Olmi.
Conceived as a diptych, Happy as Lazzaro is a poetic fable which starts in an enchanted and timeless Roman countryside and finishes in the asphalt jungle of industrial Turin. It features a community of hardworking illiterate farmers shamelessly exploited by a vile, degenerate aristocrat family.
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