The most accessible and best received Dogma film to date: an ensemble piece, taking place in a small isolated Danish town, with a focus on relationships. The connection point for these is the weekly Italian lessons at the civic center. Learning Italian becomes a metaphor for dreaming dreams, struggling to lift one's gaze beyond the ordinary. Yet the ordinary is also magical in its way, as we dig into the complexities of the human condition as it is manifested in the characters, their choices and interactions. Dogme has a (well-deserved) reputation for stark, bleak movies: this one is the exception -- a romantic charmer.

Italian For Beginners is part of the "Dogma For Beginners" emphasis of the Featured Screenings program at Flickerings at Cornerstone Festival, July 2-5, 2003.

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