Diciannove

Writer-director Giovanni Tortorici makes a singular debut with his unpredictable character study of a Palermo teenager who travels abroad for university and gets tangled up in himself. DICIANNOVE—Italian for nineteen, Leonardo’s age—sidesteps coming-of-age clichés with its quietly stubborn but confused antihero, and his oddball solitary streak. After trying business school in London and rooming with his club-going sister, Leonardo (Manfredi Marini) flees to study literature in Siena. When he’s not having awkward chats with professors, overeager acquaintances or his befuddled roommates, Leo holes up in his room, grumbling at 19th-century Dante scholars or halfheartedly cruising online. Tortorici and Marini understand the gnarly side of adolescence, and that rebellion doesn’t always take titillating or instantly quotable forms; the kid’s amused at the world one moment, depressive the next, presentable in public and a slob at home. Shot with flashes of New Wave flair and heady stabs of classical music, Tortorici’s portrait preserves the mystery of how we become who we are and shows the peculiarly human muddle we pass through along the way. (Nicolas Rapold)

In presence of Giovanni Tortorici und Luca Guadagnino.