Magic Island Trailer (2015)

Trailer for Magic Island (Berlusconi, le roi Silvio) which will be screening at the Hot Docs Film Festival.

Ten years after his father—renowned Hollywood character actor Vincent Schiavelli (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus)—died back in his ancestral village of Polizzi, Sicily, 27-year-old Andrea received a strange phone call. He must either return to Italy to collect an inheritance, or lose it forever. Estranged from his father for years, Andrea built an artistic life of his own as a musician. He maintains ties with his actress mother Allyce Beasley (Moonlighting, Cheers), but never confronted his atrophied relationship with his dad. Filmmaker Marco Amenta follows Andrea’s trepidations back to a stunning Sicilian idyll, creating beautifully framed spaces in which a young man communes with and retreats from old memories, family friends and his father’s last girlfriend. Languid, intimate shots observe Andrea trying to reconcile a man who effortlessly inhabited the lives of countless characters, but seldom his own child’s. Palpably atmospheric, Magic Island elegantly conjures a father’s ghost and a son’s reawakening.