Everyone has their own Chimera, something they try to achieve but never manage to find. For the band of tombaroli, thieves of ancient grave goods and archaeological wonders, the Chimera means redemption from work and the dream of easy wealth. For Arthur, the Chimera looks like the woman he lost, Beniamina. To find her, Arthur challenges the invisible, searches everywhere, goes inside the earth – in search of the door to the afterlife of which myths speak. In an adventurous journey between the living and the dead, between forests and cities, between celebrations and solitudes, the intertwined destinies of these characters unfold, all in search of the Chimera. Italy, 2023, 130 minutes, Italian and English.
“Mournful yet exuberant, La Chimera is a towering work of art presented with the unassuming invitation of a warming summer morning. In a way, it allows the viewer to traverse time and space, one luminous image at a time. A staunch humanist, Rohrwacher makes movies that are primed for immortality. If her latest is somehow discovered 2,000 years from now among the ruins of what we once called civilization, it would be an astoundingly flattering portrait of us.” – Los Angeles Times
“Alice Rohrwacher’s enigmatic and bracing La Chimera, its touch as glancing as a zephyr, asks more of us while demanding less. It’s the kind of movie you wake up from, as opposed to one you merely watch.” – TIME
“La Chimera sneaks up on you. Rohrwacher is a discreet virtuoso with a visual style that is appealing and demonstrably unshowy.” Critic’s Pick – The New York Times
“Italian cinema? The sort of go-for-baroque moviemaking that once characterized the European nation as a lodestar of auteurism? That, as La Chimera proves, is alive and well.” – Rolling Stone