Happy as Lazzaro

11 yrs 128 minutes • 2018 • 7.5

In the small isolated Italian village of Inviolata, time seems to have stood still. The workers of the tobacco farm live almost like serfs under the owner Marquis Alfonsina de Luna. One of the workers is the young Lazzaro, who is so kindhearted that he is sometimes mistaken for being stupid. When the Marquis's son, Tancredi, orchestrates his own kidnapping, he turns to Lazzaro for help, but a dramatic event causes them to be separated. Lazzaro does not give up but follows Tancredi into the big city. Karoline Eriksson at Göteborgs-Posten notes that the director Alice Rohrwacher has a high lowest level of quality and that she "does a Forrest Gump when she lets an intellectually challenged and kind-hearted person act as a witness and catalyst for the events in the film. She weaves with strings of magical realism that suddenly increases in strength and stirs everything with a breathtaking twist”. Happy as Lazzaro was awarded with a prize in Cannes 2018 for Best script.