This Week at the Detroit Film Theatre: “The Macaluso Sisters”

A stunning picture from Italy turns an award-winning play into a movie. It’s screening this weekend at the Detroit Film Theatre inside of the DIA.

CultureShift on 101.9 WDET-FM gives you a front-row seat to the latest films playing at the Detroit Film Theatre (DFT).

Jake Neher/WDET
Jake Neher/WDET

Since 1974, DFT director Elliot Wilhelm has curated the films shown in this historic theater inside the Detroit Institute of Arts. The DFT recently kicked off its 2021 fall season. The full schedule, tickets and information about COVID-19 protocols for patrons who are attending can be found via DFT’s website.

Now Showing: “The Macaluso Sisters”

Adapted from her prize-winning play of the same name, Emma Dante’s moving, lyrical, decades-traversing drama “The Macaluso Sisters” first introduces us to a family of five orphaned sisters. Living on the top floor of a distressed building in Palermo in the 1980s, the sisters create and rent out pastel-painted doves to weddings and birthdays to earn their modest living. 


Listen: DFT director Elliot Wilhelm goes behind-the-scenes of “The Macaluso Sisters.”


They make the most of their deep familial bonds by looking after and caring for each other in every way they can, including memorable seaside outings in the Sicilian sunshine, until a sudden unexpected event alters the family dynamic, leaving the sisters to grapple with the outcome over the following half-century. 

The delicate balance of sisterhood is tested in this dazzling, generation-spanning three-act adaptation of director Emma Dante’s theatrical triumph. In Italian with English subtitles. (89 minutes)

“The Macaluso Sisters” is screening Friday, Nov. 26 through Sunday, Nov. 28 with multiple showtimes. More information via the official Detroit Film Theatre website.

Detroit Film Theatre director Elliot Wilhelm contributed to this web story.

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  • CultureShift
    Your soundtrack to discovering arts, culture, food, music and the latest local events worth your time throughout metro Detroit.