09/12/2022 - At the Balkan Film Festival in Rome, we talked to the director about his film which details the gradual evolution of a love affair into a sick relationship from which it is difficult to escape

Polvere [+see also:
interview: Antonio Romagnoli
film profile], the debut feature by young Calabrian filmmaker Antonio Romagnoli, follows the beginning of a relationship between a man and a woman (Saverio La Ruina and Roberta Mattei) and its gradual evolution into a spiral of psychological violence, a sick relationship consumed within the walls of a house and from which she can’t escape. The film was screened out of competition at the 5th Balkan Film Festival in Rome, where the director also participated in a panel discussion about the new Italian-Balkan cinema. “I think that Italian-Blakan co-production is a new frontier that offers good opportunities,” he told us, “they are two worlds that are still getting to know each other but which also have many similarities, thematically and culturally.”

Cineuropa: Amongst these themes, there’s the female condition, at the centre of various films presented at the festival. Let’s talk about yours, which is born out of a theatrical text, Polvere. Dialogue between man and woman by Saverio La Ruina. What did you think the cinematic adaptation would add?
Antonio Romagnoli: I saw Saverio's play at the theatre and was struck by his way of acting, very cinematic, fascinating, musical, and also by his writing style. I already told him the night of the premiere that I wanted to make a film of it, so we wrote the script together, while the show continued to tour, even in America, Argentina, France... What pushed me to bring it to the cinema was the use of the characters' faces: for this theme, it was important to go into detail about certain things, to make the growing unease perceivable. From some screenings, people have come out mentally devastated.

How did you work on the adaptation? Did you make changes from the original text?
Much has stayed, but what we did change was the time frame: the sex scene, for instance, culminates with a whole series of scenes which, while they were taking place at different times on stage, in the film we inserted them in a unity of time and action, in order to convey this sense of anxiety and anguish, of violence and repetitiveness. I liked the idea of the big thing happening in a short time that acts as a detonator, in the first two to three scenes there are some signs, then the delirium begins from which it is difficult to get out.

The film starts in colour and ends in black and white, but the viewer only realises this at the end. How did you achieve this effect?

With the director of photography Andrea Gatopoulos, we used a process that somewhat deceives the viewer. From the first scene, the film already begins to desaturate, but we adopted a process that is not perceptible to the human eye, so the viewer realises it when it is too late, a bit like the protagonist. We tried to render visually what she experiences psychologically.

The film effectively details the progression of small premonitory signs that can lead, over time, to domestic violence. How did you do your research?

A great deal of research was done in anti-violence centres, especially by Saverio when writing the play, talking to women who had had this experience. Many, seeing the film, were petrified because these are dynamics that reappear with a certain systematicity, that have very deep cultural roots, especially here in Italy, and that do not spare the new bourgeoisie. The protagonists are not people from the provinces or the bourgeoisie, she is a teacher, he a photographer. The question is: with prosperity, do we eliminate psychological violence or do we just give it another form? Or do we perhaps manage better to keep it away from prying eyes?

Any upcoming projects, perhaps with the Balkans?
There is a project, again with Saverio, based on another of his plays, Italianesi, which talks about Italians in post-war Albania who were imprisoned in concentration camps. The film has already been shot, it is now in post-production with the support of the Calabria Film Commission, and we are looking for a co-producer in Albania.

(Translated from Italian)