September 4-10, 2020

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Sicilia! (Dir. Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 1999)

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From September 4-10, Sicilia! will be available to stream via Acropolis Cinema and Grasshopper Film. Acropolis will receive 50% of all revenue. Click here to rent.

 

If you'd like to offer additional support, you can make a tax deductible donation to Acropolis by clicking here​.

 

20th anniversary restoration!

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Something as simple as a herring roasting on a hearth, or a meal of bread, wine and winter melon, takes on the humble aura of a Caravaggio painting in this masterful film from legendary filmmakers Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet. Sicilia! is a tragicomedy involving an orange peddler, an Italian recently returned from America, two “stinky” police officers, a guilt-stricken landowner, a traveling knife sharpener and, perhaps most unforgettably, an indomitable peasant mother who reminisces about meals of snails and wild chicory, her husband’s philandering and cowardice, and her own father’s belief in an honest day’s labor, socialism, and St. Joseph.

 

Sicilia! has a rare clarity and depth of feeling.

Amy Taubin, The Village Voice

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Straub-Huillet are cinema’s conscience — an antidote to all the junk movies you’ve ever seen.

J. Hoberman, The New York Times​

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Sicilia! is a film that shines both in its own inherent vision and as a highlight in the work of the Straubs.

Jean-Claude Biette, Courtisane Festival 2013 catalogue

 

Reaches a pitch of such bracing beauty that the incantatory rhythm of the images and language leaves one in thrall.

James Quandt, Cinema Scope

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What's wonderful about any Straub-Huillet movie is a style of performance that, real as only art can be, makes so many other movies seem tepid and stale. Once you turn on to it, the style is overpowering. 

Tag Gallagher, Sight & Sound