La Chimera (15)

★★★★✭ Not just great, but expansive: it shows new ways a movie can be. ~ Little White Lies.

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An enchanting romantic adventure, an ethereal spiritual journey and a ripping heist movie like no other, the captivating new fable of lost love from Alice Rohrwacher ('Happy As Lazzaro', 'The Wonders') – the best received of her career to date - follows a young British archaeologist who gets caught up in an international network dealing in stolen Italian artefacts.

Tuscany, early 1980s. Arthur (a revelatory Josh O’Connor, 'The Crown') has just been released from a short stint in prison.

During his earlier studies in the region, he fell in love with Beniamina, the daughter of an aging local aristocrat (Isabella Rossellini), but she’s now gone.

Arthur has fallen in with the Tombaroli, a rowdy crew of twenty-somethings who pretend to make their living as farmers and entertainers, but instead pilfer the area’s ancient Etruscan tombs for earthenware and ornaments to sell on the black market, hoping to one day strike it rich…

Premiering to major success at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Rohrwacher’s rule-breaking, magical film uncovers a world of wonders just below the surface.

La Chimera is a mesmerising ode to the fragility of the beautiful things in life, and a cautionary tale about how easily they can be lost.

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★★★★★ Set in 1980s Tuscany, Alice Rohrwacher’s captivating fantasy-comedy follows a lovelorn Englishman plundering Italy’s historical artefacts with a bizarre gang. ~ The Guardian.

★★★★★ Torn between lost love and a gang of rowdy grave-robbers, Josh O'Connor digs deep for one of his finest performances in Rohrwacher’s dazzling caper. ~ The Observer.

★★★★★ The British actor takes all of that sweaty machismo from ‘Challengers’ and beats it into submission, playing a wayward archaeologist who has fallen in with local graverobbers. ~ The Independent.

★★★★★ With handsome cinematography also painting a textured picture of the director's homeland, this is a strange, spiritual and truly enchanting drama. ~ Radio Times.

★★★★★ A beautiful, haunting film, playful and melancholy, deliberately ragged around the edges. ~ Irish Independent.

★★★★★ In a word? Intoxicating. ~ Sunday Irish Independent.

★★★★ ~ Financial Times.

★★★★ ~ The Telegraph.

★★★★ ~ The Scotsman.

★★★★ ~ The Times.

★★★★ ~ Time Out.

★★★★ ~ Empire.

★★★★ ~ The i.