La Chimera (15)

From Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro), a tale of lost love and an ethereal spiritual journey.Arriving in Riparbella, Tuscany, in the early ’80s, Arthur, a melancholic British archaeologist in a grimy linen suit, is fresh out of prison. Yearning for his dead lover, the daughter of a local aristocrat, he falls back in with a group of tombaroli (tomb robbers), a rowdy, Fellini-esque crew of twenty somethings who pilfer the area’s ancient burial sites for Etruscan treasures to sell on the black market. Continuing Rohrwacher’s project of mining and mythologising her country’s past, La Chimera creates its own wild, improbable fictional space, halfway between the dead and the living, and draws you into its spell.

A joyous, masterful work of folk magic”Jessica Kiang,Sight & Sound Preview courtesy of Curzon Film.