“A film about the countryside, about the somewhat peculiar love between a father and his daughters, about missing male sons, about animals and little people that live in the television.”
– Alice Rohrwacher, Director

Winner Grand Prix Cannes Film Festival

Opens in Toronto at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Friday, March 27

TORONTO, ON – The Wonders, Alice Rohrwacher’s richly textured sophomore feature and Cannes Grand Prix winner opens at TIFF Bell Lightbox on Friday, March 27.

Nothing will be the same at the end of this summer for Gelsomina and her three younger sisters.

The Wonders centres on a family of beekeepers living in stark isolation in central Italy where Gelsomina is the designated heir of the strange, secluded kingdom that her father constructed around them to protect his family from “the end of the world.” At twelve years of age, she is practically the head of the house.

The dynamic of their overcrowded household is disrupted by the simultaneous arrival of a silently troubled teenaged boy taken in as a farmhand, and a production crew recruiting local farmers to participate in a TV competition for big prizes called “Village Wonders,” presented by the mysterious Milly Catena (Monica Bellucci).

Both intrusions are of particular interest to Gelsomina, who is struggling to find her footing in the world, and Rohrwacher manages to convey her adolescent sense of wonder and confusion with characteristically graceful naturalism.

Set in her hometown and starring her sister Alba (as the mother), Alice Rohrwacher was inspired by her own upbringing when developing this award-winning fable.

Alice Rohrwacher’s first feature film Corpo Celeste premiered in Cannes in 2011 before going on to play Sundance, New York, London, Rio and Tokyo films festivals.

She was brought up in the Italian countryside in a German-Italian family, and bees are the animals she knows best.

Please visit website for more info on the film.