Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Alice Rohrwacher is in the Cannes competition for the third time with “La Chimera,” in which “The Crown” star Josh O’Connor plays a young British archeologist named Arthur who gets involved in an international network of stolen Etruscan artifacts during the 1980s.
For Rohrwacher, the film is connected to growing up in Umbria, once the center of the Etruscan civilization. But it’s also the final piece of a triptych on a territory that she started with her previous Cannes entries: “The Wonders” and “Happy as Lazzaro.” Three works that, as she has put it, pose a central question: “What to do with the past?” Also starring in “La Chimera,” which can be loosely translated as “The Unrealizable Dream,” are Isabella Rossellini as a retired opera singer; Brazil’s Carol Duarte (“The Invisible Life”) as non-Italian woman who intersects with Arthur; Alba Rohrwacher as an international artifacts trafficker; and Vincenzo Nemolato (“Martin Eden”), who plays one of the “tombaroli” — literally “grave robbers” — as artifacts thieves are known in Italy.
Produced — as all of Rohrwacher’s previous films, by Carlo Cresto-Dina — “La Chimera,” which bows in Cannes on May 26, is being sold by the Match Factory and will be released by Neon in the U.S.
Rohrwacher spoke to Variety about the many layers of “La Chimera” and why she shot it in three different film formats. How did the story germinate? The main theme of the film are the tombaroli, though there are lots of threads and layers.
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