David di Donatello: locations in the nominated films

The nominations for the 2023 David di Donatello Awards have been announced, the ceremony will take place at the Cinecittà Lumina Studios on 10 May 2023. Twenty-six Italian films have been nominated.

18 nominations for Marco Bellocchio’s Esterno Notte

Marco Bellocchio’s series Esterno Notte, starring Fabrizio Gifuni, leads the list of nominations with no less than 18 for this year’s David di Donatello awards. With this series, released theatrically as two episodes and subsequently broadcast by Rai 1 in six parts, Bellocchio returns to the 55 days that Italian political leader Aldo Moro was held hostage – as he did in 2003 with Buongiorno Notte (Good Morning, Night) – this time focusing on the key places in the negotiations: Quirinale Palace, the Ministry of the Interior and the Vatican. A meticulous reconstruction took the very places where the infamous events occurred back in time to the 1970s to serve as sets (locations for Esterno Notte).

David di Donatello 2023 - the nominated films

Fourteen nominations for two films: Roberto Andò’s La stranezza with Toni Servillo and Ficarra & Picone, which focuses on the inspiration behind Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, set mostly in Sicily; and The Eight Mountains by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch with Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi, based on the Strega Prize winning novel by Paolo Cognetti, joint winner of the Jury Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, which tells the story of a life-long friendship against the backdrop of the mountains of Valle d’Aosta.

Gianni Amelio’s Lord of the Ants (starring Luigi Lo Cascio and Elio Germano) which tells the story of Aldo Braibanti, an intellectual, poet and writer from Reggio Emilia who was imprisoned for the coercion (plagio) of a young man, after being reported by the latter’s conservative and Catholic family, has collected 11 nominations:  the film is set between Rome and the region of Emilia-Romagna.

Following on, with nine nominations, is Mario Martone’s Nostalgia, starring Pierfrancesco Favino: it is set in Naples, and more precisely, the rione Sanità where Felice was born and raised and returns after 40 years only to find that nothing, or very little, has changed in that labyrinth of narrowed, crowed alleys (discover the Naples portrayed in the film Nostalgia).

All the nominations for the 2023 David di Donatello awards can be found on the official website of the Accademia del Cinema Italiano – David di Donatello.