October 16-22, 2020
Martin Eden (Dir. Pietro Marcello, 2019)
From October 16-22, Martin Eden will be available to stream via Acropolis Cinema and Kino Lorber. 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.
Adapted from a 1909 novel by Jack London yet set in a provocatively unspecified moment in Italy’s history, Martin Eden is a passionate and enthralling narrative fresco in the tradition of the great Italian classics. Martin (played by the marvelously committed Luca Marinelli) is a self-taught proletarian with artistic aspirations who hopes that his dreams of becoming a writer will help him rise above his station and marry a wealthy young university student (Jessica Cressy). The dissatisfactions of working-class toil and bourgeois success lead to political awakening and destructive anxiety in this enveloping, superbly mounted bildungsroman.
A kaleidoscopic historical fantasia that seems possessed by the ghosts of Italian cinema.
Imogen Sara Smith, Film Comment
Robust [and] innovative... the best page-to-screen transfer I've seen since Chantal Akerman took on Proust in La Captive.
Melissa Anderson, Artforum
Bursting with ideas... a mad, brawny character study as well as a cheerfully anachronistic meditation on Italian political history.
J. Hoberman, Artforum
Gorgeous, intellectually rousing classical filmmaking, with a star-making performance from Luca Marinelli. It's a movie where the political is achingly personal.
Justin Chang, The Los Angeles Times
One of the most epic-feeling Italian movies in years, a throwback to ’70s-era big-canvas statements. Lead actor Luca Marinelli, rousing in every scene, comes within hailing distance of the young Robert De Niro.
Jonathan Rothkopf, Time Out New York
October 16-22, 2020
The Mouth of the Wolf (Dir. Pietro Marcello, 2009)
From October 16-22, The Mouth of the Wolf 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.
Winner of major prizes at the Berlin and Turin film festivals, the hauntingly beautiful debut feature from Pietro Marcello (Lost and Beautiful, Martin Eden) interweaves two love stories: the 20-year romance between a Sicilian tough guy and a transsexual former junkie whom he met in prison, and a poetic reverie of the Italian port town of Genoa, depicted in all its mysterious, fading glory. Commissioned by the Fondazione San Marcellino, a Jesuit order dedicated to helping society’s poor and marginalized, The Mouth of the Wolf masterfully combines documentary with fiction and melancholy home movies from the past century with poetic images, sounds, and music of the waterfront today.
Impressionistic, extravagantly poetic.
Stephen Holden, The New York Times
Stands as [Marcello's] most aesthetically and structurally complex work.
Blake Williams, Cinema Scope
Jean Genet meets Pedro Costa. Weaves the love story with stylistic ingenuity and masterful emotional restraint.
Diego Semerene, Slant Magazine
Immensely powerful... represents a seismic shift in how films negotiate the boundaries between fact and fiction.
Matthew Joseph Jenner, ICS
Marcello's portrait of great love updates Pasolini's Accattone, contaminating documentary with manufacture, verismo with poetry, brutality with Buxtehude.
James Quandt, Artforum