Nostalgia

Felice returns to Naples after forty years, saying he has come to find his sick mother, though what actually brings him back is something else: a crime committed in his youth that has never been spoken about, and the friend he carried it with. Mario Martone shot almost all of it in the Rione Sanità, and the streets, stairs and courtyards are the film's principal material. Pierfrancesco Favino carries both the foreignness of a man who spent his life in Cairo and the memory of a boy. Its strongest line is Felice's insistence on not seeing the danger: everyone in the quarter tells him to leave and he stays. It competed at Cannes in 2022 and was Italy's Oscar submission that year. Who it is for: viewers who like contemporary Italian cinema and portraits of a city. Who it is not for: anyone wanting fast suspense, since for long stretches the film only walks and remembers.