ST. ALi Italian Film Festival: Diamonds

As delicious, satisfying, and full of love as an Italian lunch al fresco.

Director Ferzan Özpetek gathers around him his favourite actresses. Over a joyous, sun-drenched Italian lunch, he tells them of his plans to make a film about women. About his Diamonds. And so we are transported back to the 70s, in a costume workshop in Rome.

Sisters Alberta and Gabriella built the workshop up together after their parents died. They employ around a dozen women as seamstresses, tailors, embroiders, and dyers, creating costumes for cinema and theatre. When an Oscar-winning costume designer comes to them for the principal’s costumes, Alberta tells her they will do all of them, thus throwing the workshop into a frenzy of over-work. Cracks begin to show in the relationships within and outside of, the workshop. And meanwhile, the director, the designer, and the seamstresses, cannot get the most important costume right.

Luisa Ranieri and Jasmine Trinca are perfectly cast as Alberta and Gabriella. They embody the intense relationship between sisters bound together by an unspoken-of tragedy. Also included in this glittering ensemble are Stefano Accorsi, Loredana Cannata, Geppi Cucciari, and Vinicio Marchioni.

Diamonds is unashamedly exuberant. A delicious celebration of costume, food, women, family, and film, it embraces elements of comedy, drama, and documentary. The technical scenes in the workshop are wonderful, reflecting Özpetek’s time as a young filmmaker spent in these types of workshops.

Chosen as the special preview event for this year’s Festival, Diamonds has won several awards already, and it is easy to see why.

Diamonds is showing as part of the ST. ALi Italian Film Festival at Palace Nova Eastend and Prospect.

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Click here for screening times and to book tickets.