The Beijing Film Panorama section of the 13th Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF) will take place from April 20 to 29. This year, the Beijing Film Panorama will join hands with famous Italian jewelry brand BVLGARI to launch a special theme, “BVLGARI · Journey to Italian Film”. Five Italian movies are selected, and they are representative works by a few generations of well-known directors, from films in the golden 1960s of the Italian film industry to winners of three major European film festivals, leading the audience to feel the free, happy and passionate sweet time of Italian films, and perceive the unique flavor of Italian life.

La Dolce Vita by Federico Fellini and La Grande Bellezza by Paolo Sorrentino, both through the perspective of a male journalist, provide the audience with a journey on the big screen that mixes the urban culture with the hierarchical landscape by roaming on Italian streets. La Grande Bellezza, like the sequel of La Dolce Vita, observes the pros and cons of a dream eager to enter the upper class, and showcases the change of Rome, a city of legends, in the mental outlook.

In La Dolce Vita, Marcello, a gossip journalist starred by Marcello Mastroianni, wandering between the upper and lower social classes, is longing for a beautiful and pure family life, but indulged in flashy and creepy parties crowed with beautiful women. The film title “La Dolce Vita” has even become a symbol of the luxurious and carefree Italian lifestyle, and also implies the collective emptiness and confusion of the upper class.

In the film, the successive appearance of beautiful ladies of different styles, including Anita Ekberg, a popular actress with a strong box office appeal, Anouk Aimée, a representative actress of the French New Wave, and Nico, a singer and model who once cooperated with the Velvet Underground band to launch a classic album, makes up very different images of women in the film. It's also worth mentioning that the film, featuring the first-class fashion taste with show-like actor costumes, won the Academy Awards for Best Costume Design (Black-and-White) that year. 

Many years later, with the film La Grande Bellezza, Paolo Sorrentino, another Italian prestigious director, won the Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film and the Golden Globes for Best Foreign Language Film, and became very famous since then.

In La Grande Bellezza, like the 21st century edition of La Dolce Vita, the hero Jep seems like successful Marcello in his old age. The dancing party at the beginning of the film reveals that the journalist has successfully ascended to the upper class and become an elegant gentleman, looking on the emptiness and secrecy of the city. He exposes the fragile sense of superiority of the upper class at a gathering with friends, witnesses the struggle of a dancing girl with cancer for survival at a night club, figures out the essence of creation in a friend’s monologue, sees the meaning of piety and reverence in the religious belief of a nun, recalls the dream-like first love on the summer beach, and eventually discovers the ultimate mystery of worldly life.

Sergio Corbucci is an Italian director well-known for western films with rough, fiery and deviant styles. Django, one of his representative works, has wooed countless imitations since its release, and the film Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino a few years later is also inspired by it. This year, the BJIFF will join hands with BVLGARI to present such a rare masterpiece of the director, so moviegoers should not miss it.

The three movies, La Dolce Vita, La Grande Bellezza, and Totò, Peppino e... La Dolce Vita, are all closely linked to the city of Rome, where Sotirios Voulgaris, Founder of BVLGARI, exactly opened the first independent shop and became popular.

（“Dolce Vita is Roma and Roma means Bulgari”）”

As BVLGARI was gaining more popularity in Europe, it was rumored that several Roman princesses even used land in exchange for BVLGARI jewels. No wonder actress Anita Ekberg once said, “Dolce Vita is Roma and Roma means Bulgari.”

In La Giovinezza, Paolo Sorrentino discusses the topics of youth and death through what the two old people see and hear in a nursing home and self-narrations by looking back to the past. With film lens, we gradually lift the vanity veil of the upper class and face the deathbed redemption.

Sorrentino has a deep relationship with BVLGARI. A BVLGARI commercial starring Anne Hathaway and Zendaya, which became all the rage in social networks and fashion circles a few days ago, was exactly shot by him.

L'ultimo Bacio is an early representative work of Gabriele Muccino, who also once directed The Pursuit of Happyness and Seven Pounds. The film tells the story of the hero Carlo, who reexamines the upcoming marriage life when his girlfriend announces she's pregnant, and at the same time meets a young female student and his ex-girlfriend whom it's hard for him to give up. This film displays a few different relationship states of marriage, and reveals the nature of marriage at a bachelor party. With the rich emotional tension among a group of characters and fun of comedy, it's suitable for watching by couples.