To celebrate Disaronno’s 500-year anniversary*, we’ve teamed up with the iconic Italian liqueur makers to bring you an extra special cinematic treat: a two-month celebration of Italian screen style, inspired by the timeless spirit of la dolce vita.

Honouring half a millennium(!) of tradition and innovation, our ‘La Dolce Vita’ season – curated in partnership with Disaronno – kicks off in style this June with a deep dive into four of our favourite Italian films, spanning from the 1960s to today. Each one captures the essence of this age-old Italian philosophy, which is all about living well, appreciating beauty, and savouring every moment.

On the weekend of 4-5 July, we’re taking over London’s historic Regent Street Cinema for two nights of movies, cocktails, and a true taste of Italy. First up on Friday 4 July, we’re bringing Paolo Sorrentino’s dazzling 2013 film, The Great Beauty, back to the big screen, starring the one and only Toni Servillo in one of his best-loved roles.

Then, join us on Saturday 5 July for Michelangelo Antonioni’s atmospheric 1960 film, La Notte, featuring the impossibly glamorous ménage à trois of Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau and Monica Vitti. Each screening will be accompanied by an introduction from a member of the LWLies team, and an on-stage Q&A with an Italian film expert. We’ll also be serving up a delicious selection of Disaronno cocktails and Italian-themed goodies.

The legend of Disaronno can be traced back to the most famous creative period in Italian history: the Renaissance. In 1525, the artist Bernardino Luini, a student of Leonardo da Vinci, was commissioned to decorate the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Miracles in Saronno. For the Madonna in one of his paintings, ‘The Adoration of the Magi’, he chose a local innkeeper as his model. In appreciation, she presented him with a special gift: a flask filled with a fragrant, delicate, amber-coloured liqueur.

Since those humble origins, Disaronno has grown into the world’s favourite amaretto liqueur, famed for its unique aroma and sweet character – not to mention its iconic “square cap” bottle, created in the 1970s by a master Venetian glassmaker. Today, it embodies the elegance, refined taste, and unmistakable Italian style that has been immortalized on screen time and again by Italy’s most revered filmmakers.

If you attend one of our ‘La Dolce Vita’ screenings, you’ll not only have the chance to enjoy a signature Disaronno cocktail – aptly named Dolcevita and created by mixologist Patrick Pistolesi and his team at Drink Kong Bar in Rome – but you’ll also get your hands on a limited-edition zine filled with original content and gorgeous illustrations.

Stay tuned for more information about our ‘La Dolce Vita’ screening events, and head to disaronno.com to find out more about Disaronno’s 500-year anniversary celebrations.

*1525: The legend of Disaronno begins.

When he speaks of his inspi­ra­tions, the Ice­landic film­mak­er Hlynur Pál­ma­son men­tions as many visu­al artists as movie direc­tors: in par­tic­u­lar, he has cit­ed the pho­tog­ra­ph­er Sal­ly Mann, who pho­tographed her fam­i­ly over the course of many years, and Mon­et, who paint­ed the water lilies in his own gar­den again and again. God­land, Hlynur’s pre­vi­ous fea­ture, was a his­tor­i­cal peri­od piece, about a Dan­ish priest on an errand into the 19^th-cen­tu­ry Ice­landic wilder­ness, that was praised for its rig­or­ous and mag­is­te­r­i­al for­mal­ism, in shots like the time-lapse mon­tage of a horse decom­pos­ing across a year, in all kinds of light and in all kinds of weath­er; the horse was Hlynur’s father’s, and he would pho­to­graph it every day on the way home from drop­ping the kids off at school, part of an artis­tic prac­tice that is delib­er­ate­ly inter­wo­ven with his every­day life.

His new film, The Love That Remains, is osten­si­bly a slice-of-life dram­e­dy about a very Ice­landic fam­i­ly: mom Anna (Saga Garðars­dót­tir) and dad Mag­nus (Sver­rir Guð­na­son) are sep­a­rat­ed, but he comes over for din­ner and stays late into the mid­sum­mer white nights to play bas­ket­ball with the kids. But more than a par­tic­u­lar nar­ra­tive, the film is an attempt to, as Hlynur has described, ​“work with what sur­rounds me,” and to allow the raw mate­ri­als of fam­i­ly and land­scape to unfold over time in a process that might be called ​“slow film­mak­ing” (as opposed to ​“slow cin­e­ma”; he gen­er­al­ly has sev­er­al projects on the boil at once, each tak­ing mul­ti­ple years to finish). 

Anna and Maggi’s chil­dren are played by Hlynur’s own chil­dren, twin sons Grí­mur and Þorgils and teen daugh­ter Ida, who is more mature and moody than she was in her sup­port­ing role in God­land just a cou­ple years ago. The fam­i­ly hike and gath­er blue­ber­ries and mush­rooms near Hlynur’s real fam­i­ly home in the shad­ow of the glac­i­er Vat­na­jökull; fish­er­man Mag­gi goes out to see to reel in the her­ring nets;on a fen­ce­post over­look­ing the North Atlantic; the kids rig up a dum­my, a knight in armor, on a fen­ce­post, and shoot at it with a bow and arrows. Hlynur films it from the same angle in every time of year and in every kind of weath­er: rain, snow, wind, mud, end­less sum­mer nights and dark icy win­ters. Time flows on in mon­tages of still images and tableaux, par­tic­u­lar­ly close-ups of the chil­dren pos­ing for the cam­era, which, espe­cial­ly when accom­pa­nied by Har­ry Hunt’s gen­tle piano score, seem like pho­tos in a fam­i­ly album. And the sea­sons, they go round and round…

Anna is an artist whose work, like Hlynur’s, is time-based: she cov­ers large can­vas­es in abstract met­al shapes and leaves them out­doors in a field for months, let­ting the met­al rust and the rust trans­fer to the can­vas­es in unpre­dictable ways. This is also the method by which the emi­nent Ice­landic sculp­tor Jóhann Eyfells made his majes­tic sculp­ture-on-can­vas ​“Cloth Col­lap­sion”; The Love That Remains is filled with visu­al echoes, delib­er­ate or oth­er­wise, of con­tem­po­rary Ice­landic visu­al art, includ­ing Ola­fur Eliasson’s pho­to series Cars in Rivers and the over­head views of moss, grass and wild­flow­ers, bor­der­ing on abstrac­tion, of Eggert Péturs­son.

At the out­set of her career, Saga was a standup com­ic whose act was built on her goofy, wind­milling stage pres­ence and edgy hang­ing-with-the-boys quips; here, in lith­some ear­ly mid­dle age, she’s strik­ing­ly grown-up and wind-whipped as she con­sid­ers roman­tic inde­pen­dence and artis­tic frus­tra­tion (includ­ing a mean-spir­it­ed and very fun­ny inter­lude in which a pre­ten­tious Swedish gal­lerist vis­its, talks non­sense at her non­stop, and then declines to rep­re­sent her). It’s a wist­ful cen­tral per­for­mance in a film that sketch­es out the easy rhythms of fam­i­ly life (and fea­tures the Ice­landic sheep­dog Pan­da in a scene-steal­ing turn as her­self), but though ground­ed in the domes­tic, verisimil­i­tude is not the film’s pri­ma­ry concern. 

Hlynur’s scripts, orga­nized around stark ele­men­tal oppo­si­tions and broad the­mat­ic strokes, have the feel­ing of being com­posed more than writ­ten; strik­ing vignettes illus­trat­ing the push-pull of old lust, or the bur­geon­ing rift between a par­ent and a child, unfold in frozen ges­tures more­so than as dra­mat­ic chore­og­ra­phy; the film arranges elab­o­rate visu­al con­cepts to demon­strate vio­lent chance, earthy sen­su­al­i­ty, and espe­cial­ly patri­ar­chal self-fla­gel­la­tion. Maggi’s direc­tion­less out­side the nuclear fam­i­ly is here ren­dered lit­er­al­ly with a strik­ing shot of Sver­rir float­ing on his back in the ocean, buf­fet­ed by the tides with a set­ting sun in the far dis­tance. The Love That Remains becomes increas­ing­ly sur­re­al as it goes, with Hlynur’s cast act­ing out slap­stick sight gags and dream sequences inspired by B‑movies and Bergman. The movie corkscrews along until it final­ly just ends — but Hlynur’s life, and the lives of his chil­dren and the nat­ur­al world that sur­rounds them, continue.