Harbourside bars & dining from 6pm. Film starts approx. 8:30pm
Perhaps our favourite film of the past year, the film that won the 2024 Sydney Film Festival and had Italians pouring into cinemas like it was 1946. Paola Cortellesi’s wonderful story of a woman’s hope for a better life is shot in evocative black and white, a device that immediately places audiences in the setting of post WWII Rome.
Delia (played by director Cortellesi) lives in a working-class community with her domineering husband, Ivano (Valerio Mastandrea), her ailing father-in-law, a late-teen daughter who is in love and longing to be married, and two rascalish young sons. Her life is one of caring for all and contributing to the meagre family coffers where she can. She is held accountable for anything that goes wrong in the household.
Her moments of happiness come from a best friend with whom she routinely shares moments of levity, and encounters with an old flame, with whom a shared chocolate bar can seem like a moment of extraordinary passion.
Then one day a mysterious letter arrives.