1998

An old house in the centre of Rome – a refuge for two lonely people.  He is a withdrawn and eccentric Englishman.  She is a 20 year old African, burdened with worries about the past, yet full of hope for the future.
Kinsky hides behind his piano, with music of Bach, Mozart and Grieg.  Shandurai comes from far away and finds refuge in the house, which she cleans in exchange for a room while she studies medicine.  Their lives interlink in a game of attractions and rejections, of secrets and allusions, while on the spiral staircase, Mozart collides with Papa Wemba.
 ...An old house, a man, a woman and a piano.  And, through the window, a glimpse of the stormy springtime at the end of the century.

Credits:-
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

Cast:
Thandle Newton (Shandurai), David Thewlis (Mr Kinsky), Claudio Santamaria (Agostino)

Bernardo Betrolucci was introduced to film by Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1961, when he abandoned his studies at Rome University, to work on Accatone.  The following year he wrote the screenplay for his own first film The Grim Reaper which was acclaimed at the Venice Film Festival.  Since then he has made several films that have received international critical and commercial success, notably The Spider’s Stratagem, The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, La Luna, Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky and Little Buddha.  He has described Besieged, filmed on location in Rome and Kenya, as “a piece of chamber music for the cinema.”