In Italy and most of Europe Mario Martone is well known and highly regarded as a director, screenwriter and producer who first rose to prominence in the theater world. He formed Falso Movimento, his first theater company, in 1979 and made his debut as a director of operas in 1989 with the world premier of Lorenzo Ferrero’s Charlotte Corday. However, it was in the 1990s that Martone emerged as one of the leading film directors of the new wave of Neopolitan cinema that produced such major talents as Paolo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo. Martone is still relatively unknown in the U.S. but his 2022 feature Nostalgia garnered critical acclaim on the art house circuit and continued Martone’s fascination with the city of Naples, where he was born in 1959. Based on a novel by Ermanno Rea, the film is a slow burn character study of Felice Lasco, an expatriate living in Cairo, Egypt, who returns to his childhood home of Naples after a 40-year hiatus.