THE ITALIAN aka ITALIANETZ

Year: 2005
USA: Sony Pictures Classics
UK: Soda Pictures
Cast: Solntsev Kolya Spiridonov, Yuri Itskov, Mariya Kuznetsova, Dariya Lesnikova, Denis Moiseenko, Nikolai Reutov, Sasha Syrotkin, Andrei Elizarov, Vladimir Shipov, Polina Vorobjeva, Olga Shuvalova, Dima Zemlyanko, Rudolf Kuld, Tatiana Zakharova, Irina Osnovina, Elena Malinovskaya, Andrei Dezhonov, Vladimir Kosmidailo, Anatoly Agroskin
Director: Andrey Kravchuk
Country: Russia
Language: Russian (English subtitles)
USA & UK: 99 mins
USA Rated: PG-13 for some violence, sexual content, language and thematic issues
UK Certificate: 12A contains moderate violence and sex references
USA Release Date: 19 January 2007 (Limited Release - New York and Los Angeles)
UK Release Date: 25 January 2008 (Limited Release)


Synopsis

Vanya (Solntsev Kolya Spiridonov) is only 6 years old when he is suddenly faced with a difficult decision: does he want to live a comfortable life as an adopted child of a loving family in Italy? For an abandoned Russian child like Vanya this really doesn't sound like a bad option.

But the boy longs to find his own mother, so he determinedly sets off in search of her. But before he can begin, Vanya must learn to read the file that holds the information he needs to find her. Embarking on his quest, he naively encounters a mysterious and dangerous world far different from a child's perspective of it.