A dining table in Havelock North and the heart of the Italian Film Festival

Sunday, 12 July 2026

The Cinema Italiano Festival was launched in 2014 after Renee Mark issued a press release announcing her husband, actor and filmmaker Paolo Rotondo, would run it, without his knowledge.

Under the couple's leadership, the nationwide festival has grown from 12 cinemas in five centres to 30 cinemas across New Zealand, running from April through to January.

Rotondo credits Mark (Ngāti Tahu), the former manager of the Māori Film Commission, as the “brains behind the business”.

Traditional Italian cinema is unique, Rotondo says, because it is designed to leave audiences with a question and make them think, rather than offering a simple resolution.

Paolo Rotondo has the quintessential Italian trait of dealing with umpteen things at once while simultaneously being a picture of serenity, class and charm.

It could be an act, of course, as he is an actor, playwright and screenwriter of some renown.

But it doesn’t seem like an act.

Sitting at the dining table of his home, he speaks in a kind of staccato about all manner of things: politics, religion, Shakespeare, why Vespa makes the best motor scooters in the world…

There is much animation. His hands appear like a blur one minute; the next they’re rubbing the stubble of his cheek as he ponders.

All of which is to say, Rotondo is very Italian. But also very Kiwi.

For the past 12 years, he and wife Renee Mark and kids Dario, 16, and Sofia, 17, have lived in Havelock North, and it’s this dining table from which he and Mark have, for the past 11 years, organised and managed their Italian Film Festival.

Rotondo is quick to tell you that Mark is the brains behind the business.

It was her idea to start a brand new Italian Film festival when the chap who had run an earlier iteration decided to give it up in 2014.

Rotondo, 55, was born in Napoli (Naples) to a Neapolitan dad, Fabrizio, and a Kiwi/Irish mum, Margaret.

Things in Italy were a little hairy in the seventies and eighties, when terrorism and corruption were rife, and his parents decided it would be best to raise Paolo and his sister, Carla, in New Zealand.

They moved to Auckland in 1982, when Paolo was 11.

“It was like coming to the Garden of Eden for a kid my age. We lived in Titirangi, which is where my mum's father was. It's basically a bush neighbourhood. I just thought all of New Zealand was a jungle. It was heaven,” he says.

He was bilingual, but he spoke English with such a strong Italian accent that his school, St Peters College, decided he needed speech and elocution lessons.

“The school paid for it for some reason… Anyway, this speech teacher came in. She was about 180 years old. She was Mrs Plank, a wonderful lady,” Rotondo says.

Mrs Plank’s tuition involved the reading of poetry aloud and, later, public performances and speech and drama competitions.

Rotondo loved all of this, and he excelled at it, winning several prizes and many accolades.

“I was very animated. I’d do accents within the poems, because when you're bilingual, your ear gets tuned to accents… It was a bit gimmicky, but it seemed to work.”

It never occurred to him that it could lead to a career.

After college, Rotondo spent a year studying at a university in Perugia “mainly to get my Italian back up to scratch and to get a bit more of the culture”, then did a BA at Auckland University, where he joined the theatre company.

“I didn't know whether I was going to be a poet, a painter, an artist. I was acting, but I didn't take it seriously as a thing because it was 1989 or whatever, and in New Zealand back then you didn’t act for a living.”

As it turned out, that was around the advent of Shortland Street (in which Rotondo would later land a role), and the prospect of an acting career became more viable.

Rotondo started writing plays in his early twenties. One of these was Little Che, which starred Taika Waititi and himself and toured the country.

“I was a clichéd young man, obsessed with Che Guevara. It was a comedy, based on The Motorcycle Diaries. Taika was hilarious, so funny. He played Guevara, and I played Alberto, the best friend who drove the motorbike.”

Years of acting, writing, filmmaking, travelling, and meeting Mark in 2007, led him along a path to Havelock North.

His formative film-going and TV-viewing years were spent watching mostly contemporary Italian productions. He and his dad loved Spaghetti Westerns, especially those featuring Bud Spencer and Terence Hill.

When he moved to New Zealand the only place he could see Italian movies was the Dante Society, which promoted Italian language and culture in Auckland.

“They would show classic Italian films… There were Fellini films from the 60s, and other classics that would be pre my era. In a way it was like a personal journey of identity, I guess,” Rotondo says.

Fast forward a few decades to Auckland in 2014 when Mark raised the idea of running the Italian Film Festival.

“Renee was like, ‘Paolo this is your opportunity. You're a filmmaker, you're Italian, you know a lot about Italian film.’ I was a bit tentative, and she just said, ‘No, we're doing this.’

“Renee had seen the press release that the previous Italian Film Festival was bowing out and issued another press release the same day saying that Paolo Rotondo was going to start The Cinema Italiano Festival. When I returned home that evening, Renee told me what she had signed us up to do.

“Renee used to run the Māori Film Commission, Te Paepae Ataata started by Merata Mita and Barry Barclay. So she had the knowledge and institutional understanding, and I have the more artistic way of thinking about it,” Rotondo explains.

“If I’m really honest, Renee (who is Ngāti Tahu from Reporoa) was used to seeing cultural appropriation, and she told me I wouldn’t want to see the festival run by someone who had no understanding of the culture.”

Under the couple’s leadership, the festival has grown in size and popularity.

“We started with 12 cinemas in five centres. Now we have 30 cinemas just about everywhere in the country, from Kerikeri to Dunedin.”

The original A5 festival schedule has now grown into a stylish 54-page A4 magazine-style production, featuring ads from Vespa, San Pellegrino, Campari and Peroni.

The festival, which once ran from June to November, now runs from April to January.

Ask Rotondo what it is about Italian cinema that sets it apart, and you invite a response something like a crescendo.

“Italian traditional cinema is colossal…,” he begins.

“Take innovations and storytelling, but take also the uniqueness of the perspective and voice… Italy is western, right, but it’s also different enough to be much more interesting…

“You need to put aside the genres of comedy, drama, and romantic comedy, because none of that applies to Italian storytelling. They've got their own tradition, and the most obvious one is the idea that a film philosophically should leave you with a question, not an answer.

“Italian films, and stories, are typically not geared for resolution. They're not geared to make you go home, and forget about it. They make you think,” Rotondo says.

“Some are serious dramas, or tragedies, but will also have periods of comedy. It’s not unlike Taika’s film, Boy. When you look at Boy, it's funny, but it’s done with levity, and it’s really a tragedy.”

The last word on the subject should be Rotondo’s final paragraph in his opening message in this year’s programme:

“Italian cinema has never shied away from life’s mysteries and contradictions. Yet it confronts them with humour, intelligence, and unmistakable artistry and style - and ultimately, with hope.”