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Alberto Marchiori

Camera

Known For

My Class
7.3

The ostensibly simple story of a sympathetic veteran teacher giving Italian lessons to a weekly class of diverse immigrants is given infinitely more depth and complexity by the manner in which director Daniele Gaglianone renders his story. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and artifice, and between documentary and drama, Gaglianone has created a film within a film. You see the apparent artifice of Gaglianone’s crew using professionals, including the noted film actor Valerio Mastandrea as the teacher, interlinked with ‘real’ immigrant protagonists, studying the language to improve their chances of employment and of gaining a permanent residence permit. Thus in the course of the lessons there is simultaneously the painful and upsetting relation of the students’ personal stories but also humour, as they interact and share their humanity, bridging cultural differences, united in their striving to make a better life for themselves. (Source: LFF programme)

My Class

2014Movie
The Friends at the Margherita Café
5.6

Bologna, 1954. Taddeo, a young man of 18 whom everyone calls Kid, dreams of becoming one of the regulars of the mythical Margherita Café, located under the portico across from his family's home. Through a ploy, he manages to get work as the chauffeur for Al, the neighborhood's most glamorous and mysterious resident. Having been taken under Al's wing, Taddeo gets to witness the adventures of Bep, who is in love with Marcella the entraineuse; the trials and tribulations of Gian, an aspiring singer and the victim of a horrible practical joke; the crazy behavior of Manuelo, a small-time robber with a sex phobia; the meanness of Zanchi, inventor of the elastic necktie; and the bizarre manias of Sarti, a ballroom dancing champion who wears his tux day and night. And Taddeo's home life is no less out of the ordinary, considering his mother is being led on by the family physician while his grandfather has fallen head over heels for a well-built piano teacher.

The Friends at the Margherita Café

2009Movie