Dear Italy is The Garden Cinema’s love letter to Italian Cinema. We are delighted to showcase films not only widely considered classics but also the most beloved by audiences and critics alike. This series is an emotional journey through the protagonists, the stories, and the spirit of Italian cinema, offering vibrant and unique films from the Golden Age to the present day.

In celebration of Paolo Sorrentino’s latest film, La grazia (the opening film of last year’s Venice Film Festival) being released in just a few weeks, we’re looking back at two of the filmmaker’s previous masterpieces of contemporary Italian cinema, both of which were made in collaboration with his male muse, creative alter ego, and friend, Toni Servillo.

“Sorrentino’s films are stylish, surrealist investigations of love and regret, sex and death, age and beauty, irony and rapture. They are chic and vulgar, frivolous and profound, sublime and ridiculous. Like life, he seems to say, although life lived at a pitch many of us might occasionally struggle to recognise. His work exhibits a particular fascination with the intersections of sex, money and power.” – Alex Bilmes, Esquire

We’ll kick things off on Sunday 8 March with Il Divo, where actor Toni Servillo delivers an iconic performance as the enigmatic, long-serving Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. Servillo’s portrayal is a mesmerising, almost vampiric interpretation of Andreotti as a walking corpse, a shuffling, migraine-afflicted mystery.

On Saturday 14 March, we’re also hosting a members’ party for his Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, a breathtaking Fellini-esque tale of decadence, spirituality, and lost love. The film’s story is built around Jep Gambardella, another character made iconic through Servillo’s brilliant master acting, and the party will balance the garish nature of the film’s Roman parties with a divine intervention of a live choral music performance.