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The Predators
New Italian Cinema

The Predators

I predatori

Winner of Best New Director at the 2021 David di Donatello Awards, actor/director Pietro Castellitto delivers an entertaining black comedy which sees two families from opposing social backgrounds collide.

The Pavone and Vismara families are complete opposites. One bourgeois and intellectual, while the other proletarian and Fascist, these apparently contrary family units share the same jungle: Rome. A trivial accident brings the two together and the madness of a 25-year-old will set them on a collision course, revealing that everyone has a secret, no one is what they seem - and we are all predators.

Buoyed by an inspired ensemble cast and featuring a vast network of characters, including an assistant professor obsessed with the mystery of Nietzsche’s virginity (Castellitto); his father, a philandering doctor (Massimo Popolizio); his filmmaker mother (Manuela Mandracchia); a brash gun-shop clerk (Giorgio Montanini) and many others, The Predators goes to absurd lengths to reveal harsh, hilarious truths about class structure in contemporary Italy.

Weaves the lives of several social classes together into a tapestry of avoidable errors caused by vanity, selfishness, arrogance, and lust.
International Cinephile Society
An entertaining comedy tinged with black humour.
Cineuropa
A radical and chic film.
Spietati
Australian Premiere
18+ (exemption)
2020 | 109 min | Black Comedy | Italy | Italian with English subtitles
Director
Pietro Castellitto
Cast
Massimo Popolizio, Manuela Mandracchia, Giorgio Montanini, Pietro Castellitto
WINNER
David di Donatello Awards 2021, Best New Director
WINNER
Nastro d’Argento Awards 2021, Best New Director, Best Supporting Actor
WINNER
Venice Film Festival 2020, Venice Horizons Award Best Screenplay
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2021
Pietro Castellitto

Director: Pietro Castellitto

Born in Rome, 1991, the son of actor and director Sergio Castellitto and writer Margaret Mazzantini, Pietro Castellitto is an actor, screenwriter and film director. Beginning his acting career in the early 2000s in films directed by his father, such as Don't Move (2004), Castellitto is known for Twice Born (2012) and The Armadillo’s Prophecy (2018). His directorial debut, The Predators was presented at the Horizons section of the 77th Venice Film Festival, where he received the Best Screenplay Award.