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Thu-Fri, Jul 8-9

  • Dir. Federico Fellini
  • Italy
  • 1963
  • 138 min.
  • NR
  • 4K DCP

In Italian with English subtitles

  • Assistive Listening
  • Subtitled
  • Hearing Loop
8½

Part of Essential Fellini.

One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini’s 8½ marks the moment when the director’s always-personal approach to filmmaking fully embraced self-reflexivity, pioneering a stream-of-consciousness style that darts exuberantly among flashbacks, dream sequences and carnivalesque reality, and turning one man’s artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. 

Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is collapsing around him, along with his life, as he struggles against a creative block and helplessly juggles the women in his life — including Anouk Aimée, Sandra Milo and Claudia Cardinale. An early working title for 8½ was “The Beautiful Confusion,” and Fellini’s masterpiece is exactly that — a shimmering dream, a circus, a magic act.

Restored by Istituto Luce – Cinecittà and Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – Cineteca Nazionale for the Fellini 100 Project. 

“The best film ever made about filmmaking…. I have seen 8½ over and over again, and my appreciation only deepens.” —Roger Ebert (May 28, 2000) 

“In terms of execution I cannot remember a more brilliant film. In image, visual ingenuity, subtlety of pace, sardonic humor, it is stunning. We see a wizard at the height of his wizardry….” —Stanley Kauffmann, New Republic (Jul 12, 1963)

Above its knowing virtuosity is a naked sincerity, and each time you revisit the film’s ever more familiar haze, you realise it’s a film to grow old with.” —Ian Mantgani, Little White Lies

The Belcourt Theatre does not provide advisories about subject matter or potential triggering content, as sensitivities vary from person to person.

Beyond the synopses, trailers and review links on our website, other sources of information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense MediaIMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com as well as through general internet searches.


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