La Chimera
November 10, 2023
With a bewitching mixture of earthiness and magical realism, the latest from Alice Rohrwacher follows the travails of Arthur, a pleasantly rumpled Englishman in Italy with a preternatural ability to connect with the land.
Individual Tickets: Select showtime to purchase
Passes: $125 | $100 SIFF Members - Access to all Cinema Italian Style screenings and the Opening Night party
SIFF year-round passes are not valid for this screening. Vouchers are accepted.
With her customarily bewitching mixture of earthiness and magical realism, Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazarro) conjures a marvelous entertainment set in a rural Italy eternally caught between the ancient and the modern. Josh O’Connor (The Crown) stars as Arthur, a ne’er-do well Englishman, handsomely rumpled and recently out of prison, who returns to a rural town in central Italy where he hesitantly reconnects with a ragtag group of tombaroli (tomb raiders), for whom he uses his uncanny powers of divination to locate graves that date back to the Etruscan period and teem with antiquities of immense value to collectors and museums. Yet the melancholy Arthur has other ghosts on his mind, including his long-lost love Beniamina, who haunts his memory like her own ghostly civilization. Featuring gorgeous rough-hewn textures from the great cinematographer Hélène Louvart and outstanding supporting work from Isabella Rossellini, Carol Duarte, and Alba Rohrwacher, La Chimera is a dreamlike descent into a majestically tattered world right beneath our own. —NYFF
- Original Language Title: La Chimera
- Director: Alice Rohrwacher
- Principal Cast: Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Alba Rohrwacher
- Country: Italy
- Year: 2023
- Running Time: 130 min.
- Producer: Carlo Cresto-Dina, Paolo del Brocco, Alexandra Henochsberg, Pierre-François Piet, Gregory Gajos, Amel Soudani, Michela Pini, Olga Lamontanara
- Screenplay: Alice Rohrwacher
- Cinematographers: Hélène Louvart
- Editors: Nelly Quettier
- Website: Official Website
- Filmography: Futura (2021), Happy as Lazzaro (2018), The Wonders (2014), Corpo Celeste (2011)
- Language: Italian
- Has Subtitles: Yes
- US Distributor: NEON
- International Sales: The Match Factory