alr

Maximum Velocity
(Velocità massima)

Screening on Film
Directed by Daniele Vicari.
With Valerio Mastandrea, Cristiano Morroni, Alessia Barela.
Italy, 2002, 35mm, color, 111 min.
Italian with English subtitles.

Vicari’s exploration of Italy’s street-racing and customized-car scene depicts a relatively uncharted Roman subculture. At the heart of Maximum Velocity is the friendship that develops between a teenager and a thirty-something garage owner when the boy comes to live and work in Ostia. The youth’s remarkable talent with cars soon makes him a valuable asset in both the business and the nighttime street-racing contests, but the friendship is compromised by the older man’s romance with a restless young woman who, like the film’s protagonist, longs to escape the confines of the economically depressed region on the outskirts of Rome. The story revolves around themes of ambition, friendship, and betrayal that culminate in a climactic showdown and bittersweet conclusion.

Part of film series

Read more

New Italian Cinema

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

The Reincarnations of Delphine Seyrig

Read more

Rosine Mbakam, 2025 McMillan-Stewart Fellow

Read more

The Illusory Tableaux of Georges Méliès

Read more

Activism and Post-Activism. Korean Documentary Cinema, 1981-2022

Read more

Fables of the Reconstruction. Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias

Read more

Ben Rivers, Back to the Land

Read more

Harvard Undergraduate Cinematheque

Read more

Make Way for Tomorrow. Carson Lund’s Eephus

Read more

Jessica Sarah Rinland’s Collective Monologue