Welcome to a new episode of the Film at Lincoln Center podcast. This week we’re excited to present a conversation with director Pietro Marcello about his latest feature, the NYFF60 Main Slate selection, Scarlet, opening in our theaters next Friday, preceded by a special one night only screening of his previous feature, Martin Eden, on June 8th. Tickets are on sale now at filmlinc.org/scarlet.

Marcello, one of contemporary cinema’s most versatile talents, follows his dramatic breakthrough, Martin Eden, with an enchanting period fable based on a beloved 1923 novel by Russian writer Alexander Grin. The film begins as the tale of a sensitive brute who returns home from World War I to his rural French village to discover that his wife has died and he must take care of their baby daughter, Juliette, then blossoms into a pastoral portrait of Juliette as a free-spirited young woman reckoning with a local witch’s prophecy for her future and falling for the modern man who literally drops from the sky. In his first film made in France, Marcello proves again that he is as comfortable in the realm of folklore as he is in creative nonfiction, delicately interweaving realist drama, ethereal romance, and musical flights of fancy.

Following our screening of Scarlet, Marcello spoke with NYFF selection committee member, Florence Almozini.