After The Son's Room and Calm
Chaos, Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti is debuting on Thursday a
new film about bereavement - Mia Madre, my mother.
Presenting the film to the press Monday before it hits
movie theatres nationwide, Nanni Moretti however said Mia Madre
"is not part of a trilogy on death".
In The Son's Room (2001), which won the Palme d'Or in
Cannes, Moretti directed and acted in the role of a father seen
reeling after the accidental death of his teenage son while in
Calm Chaos (2008) Moretti plays a grieving single dad.
Calm Chaos was directed by Antonello Grimaldi, while the
screenplay was written by Moretti together with Laura Paolucci
and Francesco Piccolo - again his collaborator on the mother
project.
"The truth is that as time passes, you think more about
death" and Mia Madre "talks about something I have experienced",
the filmmaker said.
Moretti's own mother, Agata Apicella, died in 2010.
The movie is widely expected to be presented in competition
or out of competition in Cannes, and Moretti said he would
welcome either: "I accept everything from Cannes".
Mia Madre is the 12th feature movie of the filmmaker who
sprang to fame with Ecce Bombo (1978) and is known for modern
classics like Bianca (1984), La Messa E' Finita (1985),
Palombella Rossa (1989) and Caro Diario (1993).
Mia Madre is Moretti's first film since Habemus Papam,
which was nominated for a Palme d'Or in 2011.
It focuses on a filmmaker, Margherita, interpreted by
leading Italian actress Margherita Buy, who has to deal with the
terminal illness of her mother Ada, actress Giulia Lazzarini,
while on set filming a new movie starring an exuberant
Italian-American, Barry Higgins, who is played by John Turturro.
Meanwhile her love life is crumbling and her relationship
with a teenage daughter is troubled.
Moretti, often the protagonist in his movies, this time has
a supporting role as Margherita's brother, an engineer whose
career is at a standstill.
"I never imagined myself at the centre of this film", said
Moretti who interprets perhaps the most serious role of his
career as Giovanni, a man completely devoid of the obsessions
and idiosyncrasies that are usually intrinsic to the director's
movie persona.
Moretti acknowledged the movie is "autobiographical" and
focuses on his mother Agata, a professor of classics at Rome's
Visconti Lycée.
"I feel embarrassed to talk about my real mother but it is
true, as you see in the movie, that there were generations and
generations of her ex-students who continued to see her and
visited at home", said the director.
Mia Madre, he continued "is not a typical film of mine".
"I wanted to create a contrast between Margherita's
personal situation that was very fluid and delicate and a movie
which, on the contrary, is absolutely solid and structured".
Lazzarin, mainly a theatre performing actress who
interprets Buy's mother, said acting in a Moretti movie was a
dream come true.
"I had never met Moretti before but I had always dreamed of
working with him, though the time set of theatre and cinema are
too different".
"One day he came to visit, we had green tea and after a few
months the deed was done", she said.
Meanwhile Buy, in her third consecutive film with Moretti,
said she had "fun interpreting a filmmaker, especially in
yelling at actors, as occurs in more than one scene".
"Saying 'stop' on set gives you an incredible sense of
power", she said.
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