Hà Nội's cinema calendar gets a standout addition this autumn: Italian Film Week 2026 opens on October 27 at the National Film Centre, with six award-winning Italian features screening over the week — and tickets won't cost you a thing.
The headline act is La Grazia (The Pardon), written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino, one of Italy's most celebrated living filmmakers. The film premiered as the opener at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival and picked up the Volpi Cup for Best Actor there. Sorrentino's CV speaks for itself: seven films in Competition at Cannes (Il Divo took the Prix du Jury in 2008), and The Great Beauty sweeping the Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA for Best Foreign Language Film in 2014. Critics have long placed him in the lineage of Fellini and Antonioni — visually rich, structurally ambitious drama.
Around La Grazia sit five more titles: My Tennis Maestro, Primavera, Sweetheart, The Last One On The Road and Diamonds. What ties the programme together is that every film has won recognition on the festival circuit — honours from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, Golden Globe Italy and the Barcelona-Saint Jordi International Film Festival among them. The directors range from newcomers to veterans, some of whom came to film from performance art, opera or acting, which should give the week an unusually varied tone.
Thematically, the organisers frame the selection around contemporary Italy — what defines being human in a post-modern world facing rapid change. Even if that sounds lofty, the practical draw is simple: recent Italian festival winners, on a big screen, in a city where quality arthouse programming can be thin on the ground.
For travellers, this is a genuinely easy event to fold into a Hà Nội trip. Screenings run at 7.30pm at the National Cinema Centre, 87 Láng Hạ Street. Free tickets are distributed from Casa Italia at 18 Lê Phụng Hiểu — a short walk from Trúc Bạch Lake and the Temple of Literature area — from October 20 until they run out. You can register for a maximum of two tickets per film, so don't count on walking up on the night for Sorrentino's screening; that one will go fast.
If you're in the capital in late October, pair an evening screening with a wander through the French Quarter or dinner nearby on Láng Hạ — it's a neat way to add a piece of contemporary European culture to a Southeast Asian city break without spending a dong.
