Virginia Film Festival

VIRGINIA FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES MARCH & APRIL YEAR-ROUND SERIES PROGRAMS & GUESTS 

by John Kelly on March 5, 2024

Ennio, Giuseppe Tornatore’s Moving Documentary About Legendary Composer Ennio Morricone, Set for March 19 

Argentinian Filmmaker Lisandro Alonso Visits With Eureka, A Meditation on the Indigenous Experience in America, on April 30 

Charlottesville, VA – March 5, 2024 – The Virginia Film Festival continues its 2024 VAFF at Violet Crown Series on March 19 with a sneak preview of Ennio, a moving and comprehensive documentary from filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso) about the legendary composer, and his longtime collaborator, Ennio Morricone. 

In April, the series will feature Eureka, a meditation on the experiences of indigenous peoples in the Americas, starring Viggo Mortensen. Argentinian director Lisandro Alonso will be on hand to discuss the film in person. 

The 2024 VAFF at Violet Crown Series is presented by Ting Internet.  

With Ennio, Tornatore turns his camera on his two-time Academy Award-winning collaborator Ennio Morricone (1928-2020), exploring the breadth of the indefatigable composer’s career, from his early Italian pop songs to his unforgettable film scores, including Days of Heaven; A Fistful of Dollars; The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly; The Hateful Eight; The Thing; and hundreds of others. Morricone’s closest collaborators and contemporaries—Dario Argento, Joan Baez, Bernardo Bertolucci, Clint Eastwood, Quentin Tarantino, and others—share their memories and experiences, providing an inside look at the visionary artist, and a career that included more than 500 unforgettable soundtracks.  

Ennio will screen at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, March 19 at Violet Crown, and Benjamin Rous, Music Director of the Charlottesville Symphony, will deliver an introduction and moderate a post-screening discussion. The screening is presented in collaboration with community partner, The Charlottesville Symphony at the University of Virginia. 

Eureka finds Argentinian filmmaker Lisandro Alonso (Jauja) traversing time, space, and genre to present an elliptical meditation on the experiences of indigenous communities across the Americas. Opening in a dusty town of the Old West, reality soon transitions to contemporary South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation before finally landing in the jungles of 1970s Brazil. As the triptych unfolds, each temporal and spatial shift provokes metaphysical questions about colonial influence on native peoples and the ever-present tensions between indigeneity and the Western world. Featuring three-time Academy Award nominee Viggo Mortenson, Eureka is a graceful refraction of history and place, and has won critical acclaim including from Rolling Stone, which called it “stunning,” and “pure arthouse bliss.” 

Eureka will be presented at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, April 30 at Violet Crown, followed by a discussion with director Lisandro Alonso. The program is co-presented by the Department of Spanish, Italian & Portuguese at UVA, the Center for Global Inquiry & Innovation at UVA, and Global Spanish at UVA. 

Tickets for Ennio are on-sale now at violetcrown.com and are $13 adult and $11 student, child, and seniors. Tickets for Eureka will go on sale later in March. 

The Virginia Film Festival is a program of the University of Virginia, with support from the Office of the Provost and Vice Provost for the Arts.  

The 37th annual Virginia Film Festival will take place from October 30-November 3 in Charlottesville. For more information, visit virginiafilmfestival.org.