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Italy

2001-2010

Ferzan Ozpetek's La Finestra di fronte (Facing Windows) is released.   Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Filippo Nigro, Massimo Girotti and Raoul Bova star. [MORE] [ADD]

Gianni Amelio’s Le Chiavi di casa (The House Keys), in which a developmentally challenged teenager is accompanied by the father he has never met for medical tests, is released.   Charlotte Rampling stars as a woman the father meets at the hospital. [MORE] [ADD]

Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake wins the Golden Lion award at this year’s Venice Film Festival.   Alejandro Amenábar’s Mar adentro wins the Jury Grand Prize. [MORE] [ADD]

Writer-director Paolo Sorrentino’s enigmatic Le Conseguenze dell'amore (The Consequences of Love), starring Toni Sevillo, is released. [MORE] [ADD]

Tsui Hark’s martial arts film Qi jian (Seven Swords) opens the Venice Film Festival.  [MORE] [ADD]

Ang Lee's gay cowboy film Brokeback Mountain wins the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival. [MORE] [ADD]

Screenwriter Agenore Incrocci dies in Rome at the age of 86.    [MORE] [ADD]

Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia premieres as the opening film at this year’s Venice Film Festival.   The film, based on the James Ellroy novel about the murder of Elizabeth Short in 1946, stars Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank. [MORE] [ADD]

Chinese director Jia Zhang-Ke’s Sanxia Haoren (Still Life) wins the Golden Lion award at this year’s Venice Film Festival.   Helen Mirren wins best actress for her performance in The Queen. [MORE] [ADD]

Nicole Kidman opens Rome's first international film festival [MORE] [ADD]

Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov’s Playing the Victim wins the Best Film Award at the first Rome International Film Festival. [MORE] [ADD]

Catherine Hardwicke's The Nativity Story becomes the first feature film to have its premiere in Vatican City. [MORE] [ADD]

Director Michelangelo Antonioni dies in Rome at the age of 94.   Despite suffering a major stroke in 1983, Antonioni continued to direct for a number of years.  [MORE] [ADD]

The Cinecitta studios suffer a fire on the set of the HBO TV series, Rome.  [MORE] [ADD]

Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution wins the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival.   Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There and the French film The Secret of the Grain tie for the Special Jury Prize, while the Silver Lion goes to Brian De Palma’s Redacted.  [MORE] [ADD]

Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola’s first film for 10 years, receives mixed reviews at the Rome Film Festival.  [MORE] [ADD]

25/1 -

Federico Moccia’s Scusa se ti chiamo amore (Sorry If I Call You Love), a romance starring Raoul Bava based on a bestselling novel, is released to scathing reviews. [MORE] [ADD]

8/2 -

Antonio Luigi Grimaldi’s Caos calmo (Quiet Chaos) is released.   The film stars Nanni Moretti as a television executive who takes to a park bench following the death of his wife. [MORE] [ADD]

28/2 -

A new list of the 100 greatest Italian films causes controversy because it fails to include any films by a female director. [MORE]

7/3 -

Carlo Verdone’s comedy Grande, grosso e Verdone (Big, Bad and Verdone) in which he also stars as a variety of comical characters, is released. [MORE] [ADD]

28/3 -

Paolo Virzi’s Tutta la vita davanti (Your Whole Life Ahead of You) is released.  Elio Germano, Valerio Mastandrea, and Sabrina Ferilli star as workers in a call centre. [MORE] [ADD]

17/4 -

French actor Gerard Depardieu is ordered to pay compensation to paparazzo Dario Orlandi for attacking him on 3^rd October 2005. [MORE]

23/4 -

Stuntman Aris Comninos suffers serious injuries in Lake Garda after colliding with another vehicle while driving an Alfa Romeo 159 during the filming Quantum of Solace, the latest James Bond film.  Co-driver Bruno Verdirosi is less seriously injured. [MORE]

4/6 -

Former Italian movie mogul Vittorio Cecchi Gori is questioned about his alleged attempts to move money around his companies in order to appear insolvent and avoid paying his creditors. [MORE]

7/6 -

Film director Dino Risi dies at his home in Rome at the age of 91 after a long period of ill health.   Risi received two Academy Award nominations for his 1974 film Profumo di Donna (Scent of a Woman) which was later remade by Hollywood with Al Pacino. [MORE] 

16/6 -

The Vatican confirms that it has refused permission for filming of Angels & Demons, the prequel to The Da Vinci Code, to take place in its churches. [MORE]

8/9 -

Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, in which Mickey Rourke plays a washed-up wrestler staging a comeback, wins the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival.   The Silver Lion goes to Alexei German Jr for Paper Soldier, while Ethiopian Haile Gerima’s Teza wins the Special Jury Prize. [MORE] [ADD]

29/9 -

Controversy surrounds the press screening of Spike Lee’s WWII drama Miracle at St. Anna when the director and writer James McBride are accused of deliberately misrepresenting the facts.   Lee refuses to apologise. [MORE]

7/10 -

Film producer Vittorio Cecchi Gori is released from preventative custody after a total of four months behind bars and under house arrest on charges of fraudulent bankruptcy. [MORE]

21/10 -

Gaetano Blandini, the Ministry of Culture’s general director for cinema, puts the government’s 24% stake in Rome’s Cinecitta Studios up for auction. [MORE]

23/10 -

Producer Gianluigi Braschi, who collaborated with Roberto Benigni on a number of the comic actor’s films, dies in Milan at the age of 45 after a long illness. [MORE] [ADD]

24/10 -

Approximately 1,000 university students stage a sit-in on the Rome Auditorium catwalk at the Rome Film Festival in protest at education cutbacks prior to the screenings of Uli Edel’s Baader Meinhof and Connie Walther’s Long Shadows.   They quickly disperse in the face of policemen clad in riot gear. [MORE] [ADD]

3/1 -

British actor Edmund Purdom, best known for his role in The Egyptian (1954) dies at the age of 82. [MORE] [ADD]

Fausto Brizzi’s ensemble piece Ex replaces Giovanni Veronese’s Italians at the top of the domestic box office chart.   Brizzi’s film stars Cristiana Capotondi and Alessandro Gassman. [MORE] [ADD]

Screenwriter Tullio Pinelli, who collaborated with Federico Fellini on La Dolce Vita and 8½ dies in Rome at the age of 100.   Nominated for four Academy Awards, Pinelli, who wrote for the stage as well as the screen, also worked with Roberto Rossellini, Pietro Germi, and Mario Monicelli. [MORE] [ADD]

Rome’s Café de Paris, which gained international fame after appearing in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, is raided by police who believe it has fallen into the hands of the Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia. [MORE]

The organisers of the Venice Film Festival announce that a prize will be awarded for best 3D stereoscopic film for the first time at this year’s festival. [MORE] [ADD]

Joe Dante’s The Hole wins the Venice Film Festival’s first Premio Persol to a 3D feature. [MORE] [ADD]

Danish-Italian director Nicolo Donato’s debut feature Brotherskab (Brotherhood) wins the Golden Marc’Aurelio Award for Best Film at the Rome Film Festival, while Giorgio Diritti’s The Man Who Will Come wins the international jury’s Silver Marc’Aurelio Grand Jury Award and the Golden Marc’Aurelio Audience Award For Best Film. [MORE] [ADD]

Dozens of young cinemagoers suffer panic attacks after watching the horror film Paranormal Activity.   The film is on general release with no age restrictions. [MORE]

Culture minister Sandro Bondi rejects an invitation to the Cannes Film Festival in protest at its decision to screen Sabina Guzzanti’s Draquila, a satirical documentary about the L’Aquila earthquake. [MORE]

Susi Cecchi D'Amico, the screenwriter of such screen epics as Bicycle Thieves and The Leopard, dies in Rome at the age of 96. [ADD]

Jury President Quentin Tarantino is accused of favouritism at the Venice Film Festival after the Golden Lion is awarded to his former lover Sophia Coppola for Somewhere, and Best Director and Script prizes are awarded to his friend Alex de la Iglesia for Balada Triste de Trompeta. [MORE]

Cinemas, theatres, concert halls, opera houses and circuses are all closed in a 24-hour strike in protest at proposed arts spending cuts.   The government intends to impose cuts of €146m (£125m) from performing arts subsidies in 2011. [ADD]

95-year-old director Mario Monicelli, one of the pioneers of the Commedia all’Italiana (Italian-style comedy) leaps to his death from a window of the San Giovanni hospital in Rome days after being admitted with terminal prostate cancer.   He was best known for such movies as I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street) (1958) and Amici Miei (My Friends) (1975). [ADD]