New Wave Films will be releasing Martin Eden on Friday 9th of July, 2021 in cinemas around the UK and on digital platforms (Curzon Home Cinema, BFI Player). The award-winning, internationally acclaimed narrative feature by Pietro Marcello is a distinctive and original adaptation of Jack London’s bildungsroman starring charismatic Luca Marinelli (The Old Guard, They Call Me Jeeg) and Jessica Cressy.
The young sailor Martin Eden (Luca Marinelli) goes ashore in Naples. Working class and uneducated, his fate changes forever when he rescues a boy from a beating by a security guard on the docks. The boy invites him into his bourgeois home, where Eden meets Elena (Jessica Cressy), the daughter of an upper-crust industrial family. It is love at first sight for Eden, seduced by her education and refinement. Martin’s dream of becoming an accomplished writer is now something he hopes will elevate him to the family’s social standing and marriage with Elena. He proves himself quickly as an autodidact, but grapples with politics under the influence of a left-wing journalist, Russ Brissenden (Carlo Cecchi), who guides him deeper into socialist circles, resulting in a political reawakening that challenges his love for Elena and his aspirations to the elite world that she comes from.
See the trailer below:
Venice International Film Festival World Premiere 2019 (Official Competition)
Venice International Film Festival Winner – Best Actor, Luca Marinelli
Toronto International Film Festival Winner – Platform Prize
