ITALY

IMPROVVISAMENTE A NATALE MI SPOSO

2023 – DCP – color – 105’

Direction: Francesco Patierno

Screenplay: Francesco Patierno, Federico Baccomo

Cinematography: Mike Stern Sterzynski

Editing: Renata Salvatore 

Music: Pino Donaggio

Cast: Diego Abatantuono (Lorenzo), Nino Frassica (Don Michele), Michele Foresta (Otto), Violante Placido (Alberta), Primo Reggiani (Giacomo), Elio (mayor Zandonai), Carol Alt (Serena), Paolo Hendel (contadino farmer), Nini Salerno (traffic warden), Sergio Bustric (ometto), Valentina Filippeschi (Chiara), Federico Di Scola (Fabiano), Dedalo Saudino (Pietro), Edoardo Miulli (Walter), Karen Piana (Giorgia), Namite Selvaggi (Johanna), Niccolò Miscusi (Nicolò)

Producers: Stefano Bethlen, Guglielmo Marchetti

Production: Notorious Pictures

Distribution: Notorious Pictures

synopsis

With Christmas just a few days away and like every year, Lorenzo’s family is converging at the hotel for the Christmas holidays. Lorenzo has given them notice: no one is to miss it for the world, since he has an important announcement to make. Once the family has gathered, Lorenzo drops the bombshell by announcing to them that…he is getting married! The family members, his faithful assistant Otto and Don Michele, who had officiated Lorenzo’s first marriage, are all left speechless. None of them were aware of Lorenzo’s engagement. But his daughter Alberta is the most shocked and refuses to accept the news. In fact, she is convinced that Serena, the bride-to-be is some kind of gold digger. All this begins a whirlwind of situations that will lead to both small and large twists and turns. Alberta, with Otto’s complicity, sets off a personal investigation into Serena’s life. But each of our protagonists has their own problems to solve.

the director: Francesco Patierno

Born in Naples in 1964, he is a director, screenwriter and writer. His first feature film Pater Familias (2003), in competition at the Berlinale, was nominated for three Silver Ribbons and a David di Donatello; it won 12 awards for best debut and was selected for more than a hundred festivals. The Early Bird Catches the Worm (2008) was in competition at the Karlovy Vary FF and nominated for a David di Donatello for Best Supporting Actor. In the same year, Patierno directed four episodes of the series Donne Assassine, aired on FoxCrime, which won Best Director and Best Actress awards at the Roma Fiction Festival. In 2011, his third film Things from Another World participated in the Venice Film Festival in the Controcampo section and was in competition at the Tokyo Film Festival. In 2012 The War of the Volcanoes, a documentary about the love triangle between Rossellini, Magnani and Bergman was successfully presented at the Venice, Toronto, London, and New York film festivals and distributed in over thirty countries worldwide. In January 2014, his fourth feature film People Who Are Well, starring Claudio Bisio, Margherita Buy and Diego Abatantuono, participated in festivals in Sweden, Brazil and Los Angeles. In 2017 his documentary Naples ‘44, based on the book of the same name by Norman Lewis, with narration by Benedict Cumberbatch, was in competition at the Rome Film Festival where it won the Silver Ribbon for Best Documentary Film and was nominated for a David di Donatello. Also in 2017, DIVA!, which featured eight of Italy’s finest actresses, was part of the official selection at the Venice Film Festival and in the Open Roads screening at New York’s Lincoln Center. DIVA! also won the Silver Ribbon for Best Documentary Film in 2018. His latest documentary, Camorra, premiered in September 2018 in the official selection of the Venice Film Festival, was in the main competition of the IDFA Festival and has been selected for more than twenty major international festivals. In 2021 Patierno wrote and directed the feature film The Plague, an adaptation of a novel of the same name by Nobel Prize-winning writer Albert Camus. In 2022 he directed La Cura presented at the Rome Film Festival along with Improvvisamente Natale, produced by Notorius Pictures and distributed on the Prime Video platform.

director’s statement

“With now a second chapter following the successful debut of the first a year ago, there is a growing desire to confront a cinema audience that speaks to everyone, yet respects, first and foremost, their intelligence. For this very reason, producers and directors have worked on a story that is light but not trivial, delicate and yet profound, seeking not only laughter but also the capacity to touch the strings of emotion with the support of a great cast. Along with many members of the core cast, such as Abatantuono, Violante Placido, Frassica and Mago Forest, there are also new additions such as Elio, Primo Reggiani, Valentina Filippeschi and many others. With Federico Baccomo, co-author of the script, we started with reality, intertwining a plot with which we were familiar, through direct experience, mechanisms and characters, refashioning it into a comedy that we hope, like the previous film, can achieve the highest and most challenging goal: to unite both young and old in front of the big screen, in a dark and hopefully filled up room.”

filmography

2003 Pater Familias

2008 Il Mattino ha l’oro in bocca

2008 Donne assassine (serie tv)

2011 Cose dell’altro mondo

2012 La guerra dei vulcani (doc)

2014 La gente che sta bene

2017 Naples ‘44 (doc)

2017 DIVA! (doc)

2018 Camorra (doc)

2021 La peste

2022 Improvvisamente Natale

2023 Improvvisamente a Natale mi sposo

world premiere