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“Italian Studies” begins on that most minor, familiar but nonetheless disorienting of social embarrassments: You run into a person who knows you, but you cannot for the life of you remember them. For most of us, it’s a simple slip of the memory. For London-based writer Alina, confronted with a blank space in her brain after bumming a cigarette off an apparent stranger, it’s a callback to a longer, more damaging period of dissociation — when, while living in Manhattan, she suddenly forgot who she was for several days. Adam Leon’s minor-key, jaggedly structured indie isn’t concerned with the specific whens, hows and whys of Alina’s out-of-nowhere amnesia, but with the hazy in-the-moment sensation of being struck with it, the sensation of stumbling for the lightswitch in your own mind. That’s a nebulous-sounding dramatic proposition, though as performed by a nervy, live-wire Vanessa Kirby, it becomes a tensely compelling one.

Fathom Events presents Betty White: A Celebration in 1,529 locations nationwide, a one-day-only special event on Monday honoring the actress who died Dec. 31 just a few weeks shy of her 100th birthday. The star-studded reflection on White’s life and career, which had already been set by filmmakers Steven Boettcher and Mike Trinklein to celebrate her centennial Jan. 17, will run three showtimes at 1 pm, 4 pm and 7 pm.

As for weekend openings, a pair of solid documentaries and two dramas — about memory loss and global apocalypse by pink gas — debut in a frame where there isn’t much new. Distributors are carefully weighing expansion for award hopefuls already out amid the ongoing surge in Omicron and ahead of Oscar nods Feb. 8.

Newcomers include Magnolia Pictures’ drama Italian Studies in seven theaters including New York and LA, and on demand. Directed by Adam Leon it stars Vanessa Kirby, Simon Brickner,...

Magnolia Pictures has acquired the worldwide rights to Italian Studies, the Tribeca Film Festival title that stars Academy Award nominee Vanessa Kirby.

Tramps filmmaker Adam Leon is behind the film that follows writer Alina Reynolds (Kirby), who loses her memory and finds herself adrift in New York City — with almost no sense of time, place, the season or her own identity. She finds an anchor in a charismatic teenager (Simon Brickner), connecting with him and his free-spirited group of friends as she makes her way through a disorienting but strangely beautiful cityscape.

Annika Wahlsten, Annabel Hoffman, Maya Hawke and Fred Hechinger also star in ...

Magnolia Pictures has acquired the worldwide rights to Italian Studies, the Tribeca Film Festival title that stars Academy Award nominee Vanessa Kirby.

Tramps filmmaker Adam Leon is behind the film that follows writer Alina Reynolds (Kirby), who loses her memory and finds herself adrift in New York City — with almost no sense of time, place, the season or her own identity. She finds an anchor in a charismatic teenager (Simon Brickner), connecting with him and his free-spirited group of friends as she makes her way through a disorienting but strangely beautiful cityscape.

“Our entire team is thrilled to partner with Magnolia and honored ...

Adam Leon’s third feature, Italian Studies, follows Vanessa Kirby as Alina Reynolds, a woman who at times doesn’t know her own name. Call it amnesia or memory loss or even a blackout, but Kirby’s leading performance is built on a calm confusion. Leon’s story gives little context or background to how this woman came to have these spells, instead accompanying her over the course of a 24-hour period in New York City.

Italian Studies could easily be described as no plot, all vibes. And those vibes largely become weirder as the 81-minute film wears on, Reynolds starting to interact with a group of high school students and learning she’s a published author with a book of short stories. But even that “fact” never seems to be confirmed. She stumbles around NYC like a child, doe-eyed and without a single piece of property besides the clothes she happens to be wearing.

Italian Studies Review — Italian Studies (2021) Film Review from the 20th Annual Tribeca Film Festival, a movie directed by Adam Leon, starring Vanessa Kirby, Simon Brickner, David Ajala, Misha Brooks, Fred Hechinger, and Maya Hawke. Who are we but a mix of our histories, our experiences, and the stories we [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Italian Studies: New York Stories in the Most Ephemeral Sense [Tribeca 2021]...

shot piecemeal between July 2018 and April of the following year, Adam Leon’s “Italian Studies” may be set along (and expertly stolen from) the crowded sidewalks of London and New York, but it’s unmistakably suffused with the woozy dislocation and “we have to make something” life-force of a Covid film. No one is wearing masks or social distancing in the heat of lower Manhattan on a summer afternoon, yet Leon’s heroine — a successful author played by Vanessa Kirby at a time just before people on the street would recognize her as one of the gutsiest actresses of her generation, or as anyone at all — is lost in a fugue state that vividly reflects the isolation and uncertainty of the last 18 months.

Alina Reynolds (Kirby) can’t tell if she’s in crisis, or if she’s just confused. She can’t tell if she remembers the world around...