“I had the desire to make a film with Ficarra and Picone and above all to tell the chaos, the relationship between reality and fiction. It’s nice to see Pirandello at his best as he confronts two actors and focuses on what he wants to tell”. This is how Roberto Andò tells LA STRANEZZA today at the Rome Film Fest, a film in the name of poetry and Sicilian character, in cinemas from 27 October in 450 copies distributed by Medusa, with the always extraordinary Toni Servillo and with two unreleased, and equally extraordinary, Salvo Ficarra and Valentino Picone. We are in 1920, the year in which really Luigi Pirandello (Servillo), during a trip to Sicily, meets Onofrio Principato (Ficarra) and Sebastiano Vella (Picone), two gravediggers with a passion for the theater who are rehearsing with the actors of their amateur dramatics a new popular show. The screeching encounter between the refined author of SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR and two amateurs accustomed to a dialectal theater will bring great surprises and change Pirandello and also the two actors. “There is no Pirandello of mine – says Servillo -, but every actor has his own. In this case he is different, fascinating and out of the clichés of any artistic heaviness. We see him returning to Sicily and reconnecting with that beloved world and with these two undertakers who play amateur actors. Hence the focus of Six characters in search of an author. I loved very much – continued the actor – the idea of being able to help break down the barriers between comedians and non-comedians The alchemy that was created with Ficarra and Picone corresponded to the curiosity of working together”. Instead, Andò underlined Pirandello’s relationship with popular culture: “He has always cultivated a relationship with the people and their stories. For example, it is known that he asked the stories of horns to be told, which in Sicily are very important things. And then he personally assisted to forensic debates, obviously to get ideas for his works”. And the director again: “In LA STRANEZZA I wanted to bring to the screen a character stripped of all his monumentality, a character who is also likeable. And then in this film the public is also the protagonist, the popular one, like that of the classical theater”. Ficarra and Picone joke about this strange productive alliance between Medusa and Rai Cinema as if it were an agreement born thanks to “friends of friends”, but Paolo del Brocco of Rai Cinema replies amused: “It’s not an ‘oddity’, but only the meeting between reasonable people”. Giampaolo Letta of Medusa immediately replies: “This ‘strangeness’ produced an alchemy, Del Brocco and I immediately found ourselves with such an important project”. Roberto Andò wrote the screenplay together with Massimo Gaudioso and Ugo Chiti. In the cast also Renato Carpentieri, Donatella Finocchiaro, Luigi Lo Cascio, Galatea Ranzi and Fausto Russo Alesi. Attilio De Razza and Angelo Barbagallo are producing for Bibi Film, Tramp Limited, Medusa Film and Rai Cinema and in collaboration with Prime Video.
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He went, with Pirandello I tell the chaos between reality and fiction – Cinema