14/02/2005

"This film is the concrete example of how three different ways of being and thinking can exist together in a single project, something politics doesn't manage to do. Let's hope the UN also adopts this approach". Ermanno Olmi talking about Tickets, the film made together with Ken Loach and Abbas Kiarostami, which is being released in Italy on March 11.

Berlin chose to show the film out of competition, giving audiences the chance to take this long journey through a globalised Europe, still marked by too many differences: social, ethnic and economic.

There's the old pharmacologist, Carlo Delle Piane, fascinated by a young woman who takes him to the station at the end of a short work trip; there's the despotic general's widow ready to ill treat the young man serving the alterative to military service, who's escorting her to a commemoration ceremony honoring her husband; the three Celtic fans: and the connecting thread running through this journey, an Albanian family in unstable circumstances.

"It starts off in the restaurant car, where you can still dream explains Olmi - but where you come across an increasing number of ill omen, to end up in the crude reality of second or even third class". Intolerance, prejudice and the blind defence of privilege reign supreme. " But there is also a healthy instinct for solidarity confirms Loach, who is now preparing a film about the Irish revolt of the 1920s - if we managed to overcome our mental laziness and the political lies that have distorted our perception".

Even though there are differences in style and sensitivity, the three maestros did not work separately, as happened with Eros. They exchanged actors, ideas and even ways of framing the shots. They wrote together and their paths crossed on set at least once. "The thing that unites us is our interest in man as a person, above and beyond cultural differences", explains Olmi. While Kiarostami stresses the possibility of observing things without judging them, finding truth and lies all around.
The cast stars Carlo Delle Piane, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Silvana De Santis, and the young Filippo Trojano, who met Kiarostami at a seminar in Turin and continues to work with him in Iran.