Marx Can Wait
by Marco Bellocchio
1968 was the year Camillo died. Nearly 50 years after the death of his twin brother at the age of 29, Marco Bellocchio gathers his family to reconstruct Camillo’s disappearance. Combining intimate conversations with the Bellocchio family and those who knew Camillo best with archival material, family movies and his own oeuvre, Marco attempts to manifest a ghost he has been dealing with his entire life.
What begins as a family conversation morphs into an investigation of grief, guilt and responsibility, compassion, empathy and love.
Bellocchio was born in Piacenza in 1939. In 1959 he abandoned philosophy studies at the Catholic University of Milan and enrolled at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. Between 1961 and 1962 he made the short films Abbasso lo zio, La colpa e la pena, and Ginepro fatto uomo. He then moved to London, where he attended the Slade School of Fine Arts. His debut feature film, I pugni in tasca (Fists in the Pocket), won an award at Locarno in 1965 and garnered him international recognition. In 2011 he received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice International Film Festival. His work has been the subject of dozens of retrospectives around the world, including at MoMA (New York) in 2014 to commemorate his then fifty years of filmmaking, at the 43rd Festival International du Film de la Rochelle, and in 2018 at the British Film Institute (London).
In 2016 Fai bei sogni (Sweet Dreams) was the opening film of the Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Festival. In 2019 Il Traditore (The Traitor) was In Competition at Cannes; it won seven Silver Ribbons and six Donatellos.
Bellocchio has been president of the Cineteca di Bologna since 2014.
Finally, I would like to mention the music of Ezio Bosso, which enriches the film tremendously. It is our great misfortune to have lost him, an enormous loss for music and for Italian art in general. Yet we are fortunate to be able to use his music, and so I would like to express my gratitude to those who gave permission. But first and foremost to the one who suggested it.
DIRECTOR'S FILMOGRAPHY:
