My Mother (Mia Madre) DVD

Filmmaker Margherita (Margherita Buy) is trying to remain professional on the set of her new film, but the emotional turmoil of her private life is taking a toll: an affair with one of her actors (Enrico Ianniello) has come to an end, her adolescent daughter (Beatrice Mancini) is failing Latin, but most troubling is the recent hospitalisation of her formidable, beloved mother Ada (Giulia Lazzarini). Whilst her brother Giovanni (Nanni Moretti) takes extended leave to prolong his bedside vigil, Margherita's tough schedule makes more than a daily visit tricky. Meanwhile, the famous American actor Barry Huggins (John Turturro) has arrived on set, a needy and capricious personality, whose brash presence and general ineptitude might finally push Margherita over the edge...

With characteristic openness to life's big questions, Moretti's mature and hugely entertaining film skillfully manoeuvres between pathos and comedy as it considers the uneasy relationship between artistic ambition and everyday life, the real and the imagined. It's another rich and affectingly humanist work from one of world cinema's true masters.