''Mid-August Lunch'' (originally released as ''Pranzo di ferragosto'') is a

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

comedy-drama Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...

and the directorial debut of Italian actor and screenwriter

Gianni Di Gregorio Gianni Di Gregorio (born 19 February 1949) is an Italian director, screenwriter and actor. Life and career Born in Rome, Di Gregorio trained as a stage actor and director in the Drama School of Alessandro Fersen. He started his professional ca ...

. It was produced by

writer-director

Matteo Garrone Matteo Garrone (born 15 October 1968) is an Italians, Italian filmmaker. Born in Rome, the son of a theatre critic, Nico Garrone and a photographer, in 1996 Garrone won the ''Sacher d'Oro'', an award sponsored by Nanni Moretti, with the short fi ...

whose

film Gomorrah was co-written by Di Gregorio. It currently is being distributed in the US by

Zeitgeist Films Zeitgeist Films is a New York-based distribution company founded in 1988 which acquires and distributes films from the U.S. and around the world. In 2017, Zeitgeist entered into a multi-year strategic alliance with film distributor Kino Lorber. ...

Plot

Gianni (

), who is struggling to pay their flat's communal charges, is looking after his 93-year-old mother during Italy's biggest summer holiday,

Ferragosto Ferragosto is a public holiday celebrated on August 15th in all of Italy. It originates from Feriae Augusti, the festival of emperor Augustus, who made the 1st of August a day of rest after weeks of hard work on the agricultural sector. It becam ...

. He makes end meet by looking after other elderly women for the holidays while their families go away, including the mothers of his landlord and doctor, who will forgive his debts in exchange.

Awards and nominations

The film won the Grand Prix Award and the Audience Award at the

International Film Festival Bratislava The Bratislava International Film Festival (also known as Bratislava IFF) is an international film festival established in 1999 and held annually in Bratislava, Slovakia. Apart from the international competition programme, it also regularly featur ...

, and also won the

FIPRESCI The International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI, short for Fédération Internationale de la PRESse CInématographique) is an association of national organizations of professional film critics and film journalists from around the world fo ...

Award. It was awarded the "Luigi De Laurentiis" Award for a First Feature Film at the 65th

Venice Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival he ...

in 2008. Additionally, it won awards at several other film festivals including the

David Di Donatello Awards The David di Donatello Awards, named after Donatello's ''David'', a symbolic statue of the Italian Renaissance, are film awards given out each year by the ''Accademia del Cinema Italiano'' (The Academy of Italian Cinema). There are 26 award cat ...

, the

Satyajit Ray Satyajit Ray (; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian director, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, author, essayist, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and music composer. One of the greatest auteurs of fil ...

Award at the

London Film Festival The BFI London Film Festival is an annual film festival founded in 1957 and held in the United Kingdom, running for two weeks in October with co-operation from the British Film Institute. It screens more than 300 films, documentaries and shor ...

, and the Golden Snail award at the Academy of Food and Film in

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...

Cast

* Gianni Di Gregorio * Valeria De Franciscis * Maria Cali * Grazia Cesarini Sforza * Marina Cacciotti * Alfonso Santagata

References

External links

* * 2008 films 2000s Italian-language films 2008 comedy-drama films Films set in Rome Films directed by Gianni Di Gregorio Italian comedy-drama films 2008 comedy films 2008 drama films 2000s Italian films {{2000s-comedy-drama-film-stub