Once We Were Strangers
United States, Italy
1997
96 Min
Color
1.33:1
English, Italian, Hindi
Synopsis
Antonio is a seductive, charismatic Sicilian living illegally in New York. He wanders from job to job, lives as a squatter and enjoys a carefree romantic tryst with a wealthy art dealer. When he falls in love with Ellen, a strong-willed radio talk-show host who is set to move to Paris within a few days, he decides he must find a way to keep her from leaving. Meanwhile, Antonio’s friend Apu faces a love challenge of his own. Apu is a young Indian-turned-New Yorker who was sent from his homeland with his family’s life savings to find the American dream of success and fulfillment. He works hard at odds jobs— from being a guinea pig in a drug-testing lab to dubbing porno films. Then his life is completely uprooted on the day his pre-arranged wife from India arrives in New York—the woman chosen by their families when they were children, one he hasn’t seen since he was 8 and she was 4. —IMDb
Director
Emanuele Crialese
Although born in Rome in 1965, Emanuele Crialese has Sicilian roots, to which he pays tribute in film after film. In 1991 he leaves for the USA where he studies film direction at New York University. After making several shorts, he directs his first feature-length movie Once We Were Strangers (1997), in New York. The year was 1997, the film was in English and was awarded several prizes, among which the Valenciennes International Film Festival Award. He then decided to return to his homeland and met international success (both in festivals and art houses) with his first Italian work Respiro (2002), shot on Lampedusa Island in Sicily in 2002, with Vincenzo Amato and Valeria Golino in her most ambitious part to-date. In 2006, his next film Nuovomondo (2006), once again with Vincenzo Amato but without Valeria Golino (Charlotte Gainsbourg was better suited to play an English-speaking emigrant), examined the question of emigration to the States at the beginning of the 20th century, more particularly… read more
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