kviff.com
News
Festival Guide
  • Tickets and Festival Pass
  • Accommodations
  • Transportation
  • Festival cinemas
  • First time at the festival
  • No Barriers project
  • Kids at the festival
  • Festival Shop
Program
  • Catalogue of Films
  • Daily Program
  • Accompanying Program
  • Archive of Films
  • Audience Award
  • KVIFF Talks
  • Film Entry
Film Industry
  • Industry Accreditation
  • Film Industry at KVIFF
  • Industry Days Programme
  • Speakers & Juries
  • KVIFF Eastern Promises
  • KVIFF Talents
  • Press & industry Screenings
Press
  • Press Accreditation
  • Press Service
  • For download
  • Press releases
  • Photogallery
  • Press & industry Screenings
  • Videogallery
About the Festival
  • Festival description
  • Programme sections
  • Awards
  • Juries
  • History
  • We support non-profits
  • Photogallery
  • Partners
  • Why We Support the Festival
  • Festival team
CZ
Sign in
Film Archive

Puccini for Beginners

Horizons 2006 / Puccini for Beginners / USA 2006

A sophisticated, wacky sex comedy as an example of a lesbian film. Reminiscent of the hectic pace of Woody Allen movies, lovers, ex-lovers, friends and ex-friends clash in cosmopolitan New York, and not only at the opera.

Puccini for Beginners Puccini for Beginners

Synopsis

Allegra, an unbalanced and nonconformist but amiable intellectual, is a typical product of cosmopolitan New York, searching for her sexual identity. She finds herself in a complicated situation: she is a lesbian, she loves the opera and Samantha, but Samantha doesn’t love her anymore and she leaves her. Grace, who lives nearby, loves Philip, a young philosophy professor, but he doesn’t want to marry her… Allegra has written a book, thanks to which she meets Philip. In the cinema she then meets Grace, who has come to have a little cry in front of a romantic film. The classic triangle thus assumes new dimensions. Allegra finds herself in a blind alley and lies to her girlfriends Vivian and Nell about her “lapse” in orientation. She goes on meeting Grace and Philip separately, so hastening their break-up. Although they have no idea what is going on...

About the film

81 min / Color, HD CAM
International premiere

Director Maria Maggenti / Screenplay Maria Maggenti / Dir. of Photography Mauricio Rubinstein / Music Terry Dame / Editor Sue Graef / Producer Eden Wurmfeld, Gary Winick, Jake Abraham / Production InDigEnt / Cast Elizabeth Reaser, Gretchen Mol, Justin Kirk / Contact Katapult Film Sales

About the director

Maria Maggenti

Maria Maggenti (1962, Washington DC) grew up in Europe and Nigeria. She studied philosophy at Smith College and film at the Graduate Film Institute in New York. She began her career as a screenwriter and director with the film The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995), which was a success with critics and audiences alike, and New Line Cinema brought it out on DVD in 2004. In 1999 she wrote the script for The Love Letter and, for New Line Cinema, the script for He’s a Woman, She’s a Man; both were directed by Peter Chan. In the years 2001–2002 she worked in the screenwriting department of the Graduate Film Institute. She returned to New York three years later from Los Angeles (where she had been writing for the successful show Without a Trace since 2002), in order to make the film Puccini for Beginners (2006), which was screened this year at the Sundance festival.

Contacts

Katapult Film Sales
155 N. Anita Ave, CA 90049, Los Angeles
United States of America
Phone: +1 310 440 3494
Fax: +1 310 440 9565
E-mail: [email protected]

Guests

Thomas Mai

Fleur Winters
Sales Agent

Other partners
Newsletter

First-hand brews throughout the year.
Be among the first to learn about upcoming events and other news. We only send the newsletter when we have something to say.

Follow us on the web:

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
is part of the KVIFF Group family, which covers other projects as well:

© 2025 KVIFF GROUP

Rules for Visitors / Website visitors privacy policy / GTC / Personal Data Protection / Rules for Claim / Rules and Regulations / Festival team