Andrei Konchalovsky's Sin is showing on Mubi starting June 18, 2021 in the United States.Not once does Michelangelo pick up a brush—or a chisel—in Andrei Konchalovsky’s Sin. Like the Russian icon painter in Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, which Konchalovsky co-wrote over five decades ago, the artist is never captured at work and is instead plunged into a war-stricken wasteland, a 16th century Italy that feels, looks, and probably smells like a pestilential nightmare straight out of Dante’s Inferno. There are wars, murders, plots, crooked aristocrats and ungrateful relatives; early on, Alberto Testone’s Michelangelo staggers into Florence’s Piazza della Signoria to see his monumental David preside over a swamp of corpses and severed heads. Time and again, the genius casts his eyes skyward, searching for someone who’ll only show up in the film’s closing shot. There’s a biblical quality to his helplessness, a...
- 6/21/2021
- MUBI
To say “Sin” is about Michelangelo is much too reductive. Rather than offering up a definitive portrait of the Italian artist, Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky has crafted instead He’s all those things and yet defined by none of them. It’s telling that “Sin” doesn’t actually spend much time with Michelangelo creating, less interested as it is in what makes a great artist than in the material conditions that shape and inspire one.
The Italian-language art film, which releases in virtual cinemas Feb. 19, opens with a written précis about the political rivalry between the Della Rovere nobility and the Medici family (soon to take over when Leo X ascends to the papacy), locating Michelangelo (an aptly disheveled Alberto Testone) squarely within the two. Much too broke to turn away handsome commissions (such as Pope Julius II’s tomb) and much too vain to refuse coveted endeavors (the façade...
The Italian-language art film, which releases in virtual cinemas Feb. 19, opens with a written précis about the political rivalry between the Della Rovere nobility and the Medici family (soon to take over when Leo X ascends to the papacy), locating Michelangelo (an aptly disheveled Alberto Testone) squarely within the two. Much too broke to turn away handsome commissions (such as Pope Julius II’s tomb) and much too vain to refuse coveted endeavors (the façade...
- 2/19/2021
- by Manuel Betancourt
- Variety Film + TV
The gears of oppressive government bureaucracy are designed to crush homegrown opposition before it becomes too threatening. In that sense, institutions and policies put in place by Hitler’s Third Reich and Trump’s Maga cult have a lot in common with those of 20th century Communist Russia, an ideological rope-a-dope that publically posited figureheads like Stalin and later Khrushchev as warriors of the people while privately undermining any citizen-led resistance with brutal force.
Andrei Konchalovsky’s great new film Dear Comrades! depicts such a response with the sobering understanding that historical events of any magnitude can be easily manipulated to match the motivations of those in power. Subverting these efforts means highlighting the prickly nuances of human experience under duress, and finding a sense of shared empathy in the images themselves. Shot in Academy ratio and striking black-and-white, the film becomes a detailed cinematic record of how compromise, ego,...
Andrei Konchalovsky’s great new film Dear Comrades! depicts such a response with the sobering understanding that historical events of any magnitude can be easily manipulated to match the motivations of those in power. Subverting these efforts means highlighting the prickly nuances of human experience under duress, and finding a sense of shared empathy in the images themselves. Shot in Academy ratio and striking black-and-white, the film becomes a detailed cinematic record of how compromise, ego,...
- 9/12/2020
- by Glenn Heath Jr.
- The Film Stage
Biopic premiered at Rome Film Festival last year.
Corinth Films has acquired North American rights to Andrei Konchalovsky’s Italian epic Sin (Il Pecato), which chronicles a critical juncture in the life and work of Michelangelo.
The distributor has set a virtual theatrical release in the third quarter of this year and after that will release on home entertainment and digital platforms.
Sin premiered at Rome Film Festival last year and follows the 16th century Renaissance’s most iconic artist as he struggles to complete the Sistine Chapel for Pope Julius II of the Della Rovere nobility.
When Julius II...
Corinth Films has acquired North American rights to Andrei Konchalovsky’s Italian epic Sin (Il Pecato), which chronicles a critical juncture in the life and work of Michelangelo.
The distributor has set a virtual theatrical release in the third quarter of this year and after that will release on home entertainment and digital platforms.
Sin premiered at Rome Film Festival last year and follows the 16th century Renaissance’s most iconic artist as he struggles to complete the Sistine Chapel for Pope Julius II of the Della Rovere nobility.
When Julius II...
- 6/22/2020
- by 36¦Jeremy Kay¦54¦
- ScreenDaily
Midway through our chat, Andrei Konchalovsky squints at his coffee and takes a brief pause. We’re in the restaurant of a cozy boutique hotel in Tallinn, Estonia. The restaurant is in the hotel’s basement floor; the 14th-century walls give the room a cave-like feeling, and a log fire sizzles behind our backs. Aside from us, the place is empty. Konchalovsky arrived in Tallinn to pick up a lifetime achievement at the 23rd Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF), and to present his latest directorial effort, Sin, a portrait of Renaissance master Michelangelo Buonarroti, the sculptor, painter, architect, and poet behind such masterpieces as La Pietà, David, and the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. Sin came out three years after Paradise, Konchalovsky’s 2016 Holocaust drama, which earned the Russian a Silver Lion for best directing at the 73rd Venice Film Festival.
Like Andrei Rublev (1969), a somber epic of Russia’s...
Like Andrei Rublev (1969), a somber epic of Russia’s...
- 12/26/2019
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
Arri Media International has acquired international distribution rights to Andrei Konchalovsky’s Michelangelo biopic “Il Peccato” (“Sin”), which will have its world premiere as a Special Closing Event at the 14th Rome Film Festival (Oct. 17-27).
Written by Konchalovsky and Elena Kiseleva, the film is set in Florence in the 16th century and follows Michelangelo through “the agonies and ecstasy of his own creative genius, as two rival noble factions compete for his loyalty,” according to Arri.
Although widely considered a genius by his contemporaries, Michelangelo, played by Alberto Testone (“Suburra”), is reduced to poverty and depleted by his struggle to finish the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. When his commissioner and head of the Della Rovere nobility Pope Julius II dies, Michelangelo becomes obsessed with sourcing the finest marble to complete his tomb.
The artist’s loyalty is tested when Leo X of the rival Medici family ascends to...
Written by Konchalovsky and Elena Kiseleva, the film is set in Florence in the 16th century and follows Michelangelo through “the agonies and ecstasy of his own creative genius, as two rival noble factions compete for his loyalty,” according to Arri.
Although widely considered a genius by his contemporaries, Michelangelo, played by Alberto Testone (“Suburra”), is reduced to poverty and depleted by his struggle to finish the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. When his commissioner and head of the Della Rovere nobility Pope Julius II dies, Michelangelo becomes obsessed with sourcing the finest marble to complete his tomb.
The artist’s loyalty is tested when Leo X of the rival Medici family ascends to...
- 10/8/2019
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Rome — Leading Italian film company Rai Cinema is producing new works by revered Russian auteurs Alexander Sokurov and Andrei Konchalovsky, as well as a slew of new titles from prominent Italian helmers Gabriele Salvatores and Gianni Amelio and younger standouts Jonas Carpignano and Susanna Nicchiarelli.
The production and distribution arm of pubcaster Rai has teamed up with the Sokurov Foundation on an unconventional historical work featuring rare archive footage of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Churchill captured in non-official circumstances. These leaders will hold imaginary conversations during World War II that reveal their “human nature, their vision of the world” and their personal takes of wartime events, according to Rai Cinema promotional materials.
This latest work by the director who explored the corrupting effects of power in “Moloch” (1999), about Hitler, and “Taurus” (2000), about Lenin, and who more recently shot “Russian Ark” and “Francofonia,” is working-titled “La risata tra le lacrime” in Italian,...
The production and distribution arm of pubcaster Rai has teamed up with the Sokurov Foundation on an unconventional historical work featuring rare archive footage of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Churchill captured in non-official circumstances. These leaders will hold imaginary conversations during World War II that reveal their “human nature, their vision of the world” and their personal takes of wartime events, according to Rai Cinema promotional materials.
This latest work by the director who explored the corrupting effects of power in “Moloch” (1999), about Hitler, and “Taurus” (2000), about Lenin, and who more recently shot “Russian Ark” and “Francofonia,” is working-titled “La risata tra le lacrime” in Italian,...
- 4/11/2018
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
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