Cinema in Italy is alive, and Barbie and Oppenheimer confirm this. But why do Italian films struggle to break through?

We have been reading for years that the cinema is dead and that Italians, rather than spending an evening in the hall, would rather sprawled out on the sofa watching reruns of The usual unknown – the quiz, not the movie – but are we sure it’s really like this? So much for distributors convinced that Italians don’t go to the cinema in winter, let alone in summer, we can say that we have never seen a box office as alive and in such good health as this oneand the credit goes to two films that have conquered the world and that our country has welcomed with enthusiasm and curiosity: Barbie by Greta Gerwig e Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan. If in the rest of the world the two titles collided in cinemas, coming out in the same week and giving life to that very viral phenomenon on the Net renamed «Barbienheimer», in Italy they could easily take turns demonstrating that the public, in the presence of a film supported by adequate advertising hype and from a captivating plot, it is still able to draw crowds as it did in the de times The street.

In less than two months, Barbie he collected the amount from us monster of 30 million euros, while Oppenheimer it reached 6.5 million in less than a week. Distributors and cinemas thank you, but a doubt remains: are Italians ready to buy a ticket just to see a film without which they could not participate in the public debate? AND because no Italian film has long been able to transform itself into that film that everyone feels they have to see by force except for those baked by Checco Zalone? Someone thinks that the problem is linked to a lack of courage and original ideas, but we don’t agree: in recent months we have seen many intriguing and not at all obvious films at the cinema, from My by Ivano De Matteo a Delta by Michele Vannucci, from Shark teeth by Davide Gentile a Kidnapped by Marco Bellocchio. So what is the mountain to climb?

Beyond more and more limited promotions and an unspeakable difficulty in finding many of the most interesting Italian films in our cinemas – to which big blockbusters are preferred – the problem is above all cultural. In fact, it has been for some time now that the cinema is becoming the place that the public frequents almost exclusively in order to have a viewing experience different from the domestic one: a need justified only by a certain type of film, such as action films and the great Hollywood blockbusters. The world of cinema is constantly evolving, as is the streaming market but, if in doubt, we would advise the Italian industry to take a step backwards: produce fewer films and launch them properly. In September, various Italian films presented in Venice will arrive in theaters, and to understand if they can ever get close to the onesies of Barbie and to the protons of Oppenheimer is perhaps the most interesting doubt for the most hardened cinephiles.