Scene from Alice Rohrwacher’s Le Meraviglie
It’s an exciting moment in contemporary Italian film history. Just a few short months after La Grande Bellezza took home the Oscar, Alice Rohrwacher’s Le Meraviglie (The Wonders) is leaving the Cannes Film Festival with the prestigious Grand Prix award.
The Grand Prix is considered Cannes’ second-highest honor, only after the Palme d’Or.
Rohrwacher, at the age of 33, is one of the youngest Italians to compete for the Palme d’Or in recent memory and one of only two women in this year’s competition.
Le Meraviglie follows Gelsomina, the eldest of four daughters in a German-Italian family of beekeepers in the central Italian countryside. When a television crew makes an appearance nearby searching for Italy’s most “traditional family”, Gelsomina becomes obsessed with getting her own family on the new talent show.
The film was released last week in Italy, though there is still no date set for its release in the U.S. For those interested, you can check out the Italian trailer here.