Sorrentino to receive VOLTA

Italian director Paolo Sorrentino confirmed to receive a VOLTA at the 2009 Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.
Renowned Italian film director and screenwriter Paolo Sorrentino will receive the festival lifetime achievement award, the VOLTA, at the 2009 Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, which runs from the 12th – 22nd February.
Director of acclaimed The Consequences of Love, Sorrentino will be attending the festival with a special presentation of Il Divo, (DISTRIBUTED IN THE UK BY ARTIFICIAL EYE (www.artificial-eye.com) – RELEASE DATE 20 MARCH). Il Divo, a dramatized biopic of Giulio Andreotti, the controversial Italian politician. Jury Prizewinner at Cannes, the screening of Il Divo will be an unmissable experience with a Q&A session after the film, followed by the Volta presentation.
The Volta awards are named after Ireland's first dedicated cinema, the Volta Picture Theatre on Mary Street in Dublin, which opened on December 20, 1909. The cinema was run by an enterprising young novelist named James Joyce. Living in Trieste at the time, Joyce persuaded a group of Italian entrepreneurs to establish a cinema in Dublin along the lines of their Volta Picture Palace in Bucharest.
Previous Volta recipients as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival include: Daniel Day Lewis, Gabriel Byrne, Brendan Gleeson, Consolata Boyle, Brendan McCaul and Leo Ward.
ABOUT IL DIVO
Paolo Sorrentino’s magisterial Il Divo reaches into the tumultuous political history of post-war Italy to craft a dazzling portrait of one of the period’s most complex and ambiguous figures, Giulio Andreotti (Toni Servillo). Arguably the most important Italian politician of the last fifty years, Andreotti entered politics in 1946 and led seven governments, turning his Christian Democratic party into a force that ran Italy in what was essentially a one-party system. To do so clearly required a man of singular abilities – but Andreotti was, and remains, an enigma to his fellow countrymen.
The film eschews the traditional biopic format in favour of a far more claustrophobic, focused look at the man. This concentration of energy and force pays high dividends, especially as Sorrentino has found a perfect vessel in Servillo, an actor who loses himself in the role and effectively “becomes” Andreotti before our eyes. From the film’s opening moments when we are confronted with Andreotti – in intense close-up, with acupuncture needles covering his face – we are unmistakably in the hands of a master.
What is fascinating about Il Divo is the manner by which it hones in on a man who is apparently more interested in obtaining power than actually wielding it. Andreotti is a tightly coiled, extremely controlled, almost emotionless field of energy who successfully navigates the backroom corridors of power but appears unconcerned and uninterested in issues of policy. Sorrentino’s conceit is not to skim the surface of Andreotti’s political accomplishments, but to stare as if through a microscope into the more private corridors of his thoughts. This he does with an intense desire to see and understand, though perhaps only the enigma remains.
Further information:
For further information on Il Divo and for press requests, please contact:
Alex Rowley, Organic Marketing, alex.rowley@organic-marketing.co.uk; 0207 907 1118
The screening of Il Divo takes place at 8pm, Tuesday 17th February in Cineworld. For tickets see www.jdiff.com or contact the Box Office situated in Fim Base, Curved Street (01 672 886) and Cineworld, Parnell Street.