Strangeness
November 15, 2023
Roberto Andò’s 12th feature stars Toni Servillo as Nobel Prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello, who, on a trip to his native Sicily in 1920, encounters a pair of gravediggers/aspiring actors and unexpectedly arrives at the idea for what will ultimately become his signature work.
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.
The top Italian film at Italy’s box office in 2022 and declared Film of the Year at the 2023 Nastro d’Argento Awards, Roberto Andò’s imaginative and irreverent twelfth feature Strangeness explores the inspiration behind one of modern Italian theatre’s revolutionary works. It is 1921 and future Literature Nobel Prize Winner Luigi Pirandello (Toni Servillo, The King of Laughter, The Great Beauty) returns to his beloved Sicily for the 80th birthday of his mentor, famous novelist and playwright Giovanni Verga. Upon his arrival in Agrigento, unexpected news catapults him into a universe populated by incredible personalities, ghostly visions, distant memories and melancholy apparitions. Here he encounters a pair of gravediggers/aspiring actors, Onofrio and Sebastiano (comedy duo Salvatore Ficarra and Valentino Picone) who deliver hilarious, amateur stage productions. On this compelling journey Pirandello is stirred out of a creative block and confronts his nostalgia, propelling him toward the creation of his masterpiece, "Six Characters in Search of an Author," a work which will mark a worldwide revolution in twentieth-century theatre.
- Original Language Title: La stranezza
- Director: Roberto Andò
- Principal Cast: Toni Servillo, Salvo Ficarra, Valentino Picone
- Country: Italy
- Year: 2022
- Running Time: 104 min.
- Producer: Angelo Barbagallo
- Screenplay: Roberto Andò, Ugo Chiti, Massimo Gaudioso
- Cinematographers: Maurizio Calvesi
- Editors: Esmeralda Calabria
- Music: Emanuele Bossi, Michele Braga
- Website: Official Website
- Awards: Nastri d’Argento Awards 2023 (Film of the Year)
- Filmography: The Hidden Child (2021), The Confessions (2016), Long Live Freedom (2013), Under a False Name (2004)
- Language: Italian
- Has Subtitles: Yes
- International Sales: True Colours Glorious Films