Synopsis
Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella, 1997) is Roberto Benigni's Italian tragicomedy you can watch online on iFILM. Benigni wrote the screenplay, directed the film, and played the lead — Guido, a Jewish Italian bookseller whose irrepressible imagination becomes his son's only shield against the horror of a Nazi concentration camp. Nicoletta Braschi, Benigni's real-life wife, plays Dora opposite him.
The film splits cleanly in two. The first half is a bright, loose comedy: Guido arrives in a Tuscan town, charms everyone in sight, and wins the heart of a schoolteacher he calls his princess. Then the war arrives. Guido and his young son Giosué (Giorgio Cantarini) are deported to a camp. Rather than let the boy understand what is happening, Guido invents an elaborate game — points, rules, a grand prize. The tank, he insists, is real and waiting for the winner.
The film took three Academy Awards in 1999: Best Foreign Language Film, Best Actor for Benigni, and Best Original Dramatic Score for composer Nicola Piovani. The Cannes jury gave it the Grand Prix in 1998. Watch Life Is Beautiful (1997) online on iFILM.
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