MRAC Cinema Club presents La Chimera

Followed by refreshments Film release date: 2024 Film language: Italian/English/Spanish/Portuguese

Federation Room, Brolga Theatre

This Italian film set in the 1980s features as its hero a British archaeologist who has just been released from jail where he has been after being convicted of looting Etruscan tombs. He returns to Italy to visit the mother of his now-missing ex-girlfriend (played by Isabella Rossellini) and to locate some of the loot buried on her property. Unable to find it he searches out his former accomplices who admit to taking the artefacts. More grave-robbing then takes place, leading to a surprising denouement.

Director Alice Rohrwacher made the film as the final part of a trilogy examining our relationship with the past. Tuscany and other areas of Italy were used as locations, as well as some scenes shot in Switzerland. The film received a 9-minute ovation at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, won the AFCAE Art House Cinema Award there, and was nominated for the Palme d’Or. Critics commented that it was ‘full of fascinating, orderly chaos’.