Published: June 22, 2015| 12:00 PM

Director Saverio Costanzo and actress Alba Rohrwacher will introduce their film Hungry Hearts in person at the KVIFF. The film was awarded two Volpi Cups at last Venice IFF, for both Alba Rohrwacher and her colleague Adam Driver.

Alba Rohrwacher started her career with the film L'amore ritrovato (2004). She won her first David di Donatello award for her role in Days and Clouds (2007), and her performance as a mentally disturbed daughter in Giovanna's Father (2009) earned her the same prize again. In the same year she was declared a European “Shooting Star”. A great opportunity came for Rohrwacher with the film adaptation of Paolo Giordano’s Italian bestseller The Solitude of Prime Numbers (2010).

Another of her many distinctive performances came in the film Come Undone (2010), after which she had a highly intimate role in The Wonders (2014), written and directed by her older sister, Alice Rohrwacher. Inspired by the sisters’ own childhood, the film received the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. At last year’s international festival in Venice she won the prize for best actress for the film Hungry Hearts (2014) by Italian director Saverio Costanzo. In this year's Karlovy Vary IFF will present her latest film Sworn Virgin (2015) by debuting director Laura Bispuri, which competed at the Berlinale in February.

Saverio Costanzo studied sociology and communication theory at Sapienza University of Rome (1998). He began working in film while living in New York, where he made the documentary Caffè Mille Lucci, Brooklyn, New York (1999). His feature-film debut, Private (2004), took the Golden Leopard at the Locarno IFF and a David di Donatello for Italy’s best new director. His next film In Memory of Me (2007) was included in the main competition of the IFF in Berlin and in the Focus on New Italian Directors section at the Karlovy Vary IFF. In 2011, the Karlovy Vary festival also screened his drama The Solitude of Prime Numbers in its Horizons section.