Nostalgia is a 2022 Italian-French drama film based on a 2016 novel by Ermanno Rea, co-written and directed by Mario Martone.

The film premiered at the 75th Cannes Film Festival in May 2022, in the official competition for Palme d Or. The following month, the film won four Nastro d Argento Awards, for best director, best actor, best supporting actor, and best screenplay.

Plot

The film follows Felice, a man who returns to his hometown of Naples after spending 40 years living in Lebanon. Most of the film is set in the impoverished Rione Sanità area of Naples, where Felice first visits his mother and later meets local priest Don Luigi. Felice eventually tells Luigi in a sort of confession that in one of the petty thefts carried out by him and his childhood friend Oreste, the latter had killed the owner of a local carpentry shop. Don Luigi throws him out of the church, telling him that Oreste has in the meantime rose to become a dangerous boss of the Camorra, the local organized crime syndicate.

A friend of Felice s mother warns him of danger and urges him to escape from Naples. Don Luigi then introduces Felice to a Camorra family, and during dinner he drinks wine for the very first time, becomes uninhibited, and talks about his childhood spent with Oreste, making everyone speechless. At this point Felice goes to visit the aged Oreste. Oreste, angry for his friend s abandonment four decades earlier, follows him into an alley and kills him and steals his wallet and finds inside an old photo of the two of them on a motorbike.

Cast

• Pierfrancesco Favino as Felice Lasco
• Francesco Di Leva as Father Luigi Rega
• Tommaso Ragno as Oreste Spasiano
• Aurora Quattrocchi as Teresa Lasco
• Sofia Essaïdi as Arlette
• Nello Mascia as Raffaele
• Emanuele Palumbo as Felice (young)
• Artem Tkachuk as Oreste (young)
• Salvatore Striano as Gegé
• Virginia Apicella as Adele
• Daniela Ioia as Teresa (young)

Reception

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 91% of 11 critics gave the film a positive review. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 75 out of 100, based on 6 reviews, indicating generally favorable reviews .

Lovia Gyarkye of The Hollywood Reporter praised acting performances by Favone and Ragno, Martone s direction and Paolo Carnera s camerawork, calling it a surprisingly absorbing film but adding that its exploration of nostalgia gets telegraphed to the point of exhaustion. Peter Bradshaw s review in The Guardian described the film as tremendously shot and terrifically acted, adding that the film challenges the idea of nostalgia as broadcast in the title: it isn’t simply that nostalgia is delusional, or that the past wasn’t as great as it appears when viewed through rose-tinted spectacles. It is that there is no past and present.

Accolades

Nostalgia had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on 24 May 2022, where it was screened as part of the official selection along with 20 other films competing for Palme d Or. The film was released in Italy the following day, on 25 May 2022, just in time to qualify for the annual 2022 Nastro d Argento (Silver Ribbon) Awards handed out by the Italian national association of film critics SNGCI, in a ceremony held on 20 June 2022 at the MAXXI museum in Rome, where it received seven nominations and four wins.

These included Best Actor award for Favino—his fifth Silver Ribbon in that category, making him one of the most acclaimed Italian actors in history–and Best Director for Martone, who received the accolade for his work on both Nostalgia and his earlier film The King of Laughter (Qui rido io) released in September 2021.

The film was also screened at the Motovun Film Festival in July 2022, where it competed for the main award, the Propeller of Motovun.

Award	Date of ceremony	Category	Recipient(s)	Result	Ref(s)
Cannes Film Festival	28 May 2022	Palme d Or	Mario Martone	Nominated
Silver Ribbon Awards	20 June 2022	Best Film		Nominated
		Best Director	Mario Martone	Won
		Best Actor	Pierfrancesco Favino	Won
		Best Screenplay	Mario Martone and Ippolita di Majo	Won
		Best Supporting Actor	Francesco Di Leva and Tommaso Ragno	Won
		Best Supporting Actress	Aurora Quattrocchi	Nominated
		Best Sound		Nominated
Motovun Film Festival	2 August 2022	Best Film	Mario Martone	Nominated

Year	2022
ReleaseDate	2022-05-25
RuntimeMins	117
RuntimeStr	1h 57min
Plot	After 40 years of absence, Felice returns to his hometown: Naples. He rediscovers the places, the codes of the city and a past that eats away at him.
Awards	Awards, 4 wins & 5 nominations
Directors	Mario Martone
Writers	Ermanno Rea, Mario Martone, Ippolita Di Majo
Stars	Pierfrancesco Favino, Francesco Di Leva, Tommaso Ragno
Produced by	Gennaro Fasolino, Angelo Laudisa, Roberto Sessa, Luciano Stella
Cinematography by	Paolo Carnera
Film Editing by	Jacopo Quadri
Production Design by	Carmine Guarino
Set Decoration by	Massimiliano Forlenza
Costume Design by	Ursula Patzak
Makeup Department	Marco Perna
Production Management	Mattia Cantore D Amore, Alex Marano, Marcos Vacalebre
Second Unit Director or Assistant Director	Simon Cappi, Gaia di Fiore, Luca Federico, Andrea Papa
Art Department	Alessio Anzini
Sound Department	Emanuele Cecere, Piergiorgio De Luca, Matteo Eusepi, Silvia Moraes, Giancarlo Rutigliano, Francesco Sabez, Vittoria Tarenzi
Visual Effects by	Luca Auletta, Lena Di Gennaro, Paolo Di Gioia, Rodolfo Migliari, Roberto Saba, Lorenzo Schiattarella
Camera and Electrical Department	Rosario Cammarota, Cristiano Carbè, Francesco Catalano, Cinzia Corpetti, Fabrizio Diamanti, Andrea Grossi, Valeria Mazza, Imma Napoletano, Carmine Porricelli, Carlo Postiglione, Francesco Sacco
Costume and Wardrobe Department	Angela Bove
Editorial Department	Andrea Baracca, Isabella Guglielmi, Claudio Trotti
Additional Crew	Elisabeth Croÿ, Lon Haber, Davide Giulio Menchetti
Genres	Drama
Companies	Picomedia, Mad Entertainment, Medusa Film
Countries	Italy, France
Languages	Italian
ImDbRating	6.7
ImDbRatingVotes	456
MetacriticRating	75