La Chimera (M)

An enchanting romantic adventure, an ethereal spiritual journey and a ripping heist movie like no other, the captivating new fable of lost love from Alice Rohrwacher (Happy As Lazzaro, The Wonders) – the best received of her career to date - follows a young British archaeologist who gets caught up in an international network dealing in stolen Italian artefacts.

Tuscany, early 1980s. Arthur (a revelatory Josh O’Connor, The Crown) has just been released from a short stint in prison. During his earlier studies in the region, he fell in love with Beniamina, the daughter of an aging local aristocrat (Isabella Rossellini), but she’s now gone. Arthur has fallen in with the Tombaroli, a rowdy crew of twenty-somethings who pretend to make their living as farmers and entertainers, but instead pilfer the area’s ancient Etruscan tombs for earthenware and ornaments to sell on the black market, hoping to one day strike it rich…

Premiering to major success at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Rohrwacher’s rule-breaking, magical film uncovers a world of wonders just below the surface. La Chimera is a mesmerising ode to the fragility of the beautiful things in life, and a cautionary tale about how easily they can be lost. 

Cast: Josh O'Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Carol Duarte, Alba Rohrwacher, Vincenzo Nemolato

Director: Aki Kaurismäki

★★★★★ "Alice Rohrwacher’s new film is a beguiling fantasy-comedy of lost love: garrulous, uproarious and celebratory in her absolutely distinctive style." GUARDIAN

★★★★★ "With handsome cinematography also painting a textured picture of the director's homeland, this is a strange, spiritual and truly enchanting drama." RADIO TIMES

★★★★ "With an eclectic mix of comedy, intrigue, and longing, La Chimera reflects its title in that the meaning that each character is searching for always eludes them - especially those with too much heart." SCREEN ANARCHY

★★★★ "Josh O’Connor excels in this gritty yet poetic Italian-French-Swiss drama." METRO UK

★★★★ "A wonderfully strange Italian drama that finds mystery in a grimy modern world of rural backwaters and urban wastelands." TIMES UK

★★★★ "The further down the film descends, the more transfixing its images tend to get, as if Rohrwacher and Louvart have teamed up on an archaeological dig for their own treasures of texture and light." DAILY TELEGRAPH UK