21/12/2022 - The producer of the film which won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award at the Cinekid Festival is carrying over his experience in arthouse cinema into the children’s and teenage market

Following Glassboy [+see also:
interview: Emanuele Nespeca
film profile], which scooped various awards in international festivals last year, Emanuele Nespeca’s Solaria Film is continuing its collaboration with screenwriter and director Samuele Rossi by way of the project Gorgius, which is a fantasy film seeing a group of adolescents living in the deprived suburbs confronted with diversity. Co-produced by Slovenia’s Bostjan Ikovic of Arsmedia (one of 2016’s Producers on the Move), Gorgius was selected for the 2022 Cinekid Script LAB in Amsterdam and was also awarded, back in October, the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award, worth 20,000 euros, for being the best feature film project in the Cinekid for Professionals Junior Co-Production Market. We chatted to the producer about the movie.

Cineuropa: Can you tell us a little bit about this project from an artistic viewpoint?
Emanuele Nespeca: Gorgius continues our research into the world of stories for children, and it actually makes the challenge bigger, if that’s possible. Because after having worked along the theme of adventure, we’re now tackling diversity and the line between good and evil, normal and abnormal, “beauty and the beast”. The protagonist, Gorgius, is, in fact, a monster, who lends his name to the film’s title and who rocks up unexpectedly in the lives of this group of teens at the very moment they’re changing, whether physically, psychologically, sexually or in terms of their identity. They’re all thirteen-year-olds living in a building in a deprived, dormitory, suburban neighbourhood. All of them are about to contend with something new; it’s the summer before they change schools, moving from middle school to high school; some of them are about to find their first love, or to question their identity.

Coming to the aid of these miniature heroes are another two different people who are also “monsters” in other people’s eyes: a cantankerous, elderly lady of Slavic descent who only loves cats, and a transgender person called Vittorio or Rossana. Vittorio/Rossana will help them gain awareness of a possible, new identity which just might turn these children into mature men and women. Undoubtedly, it will help them to defeat the alien threat.

In short, we’ve mixed a lot of genres together, but we think the film is really European, and that it treads the line between Italian and Slovenian.

Gorgius won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award at Cinekid’s Junior Co-Production Market, a prize which might enhance the project’s development even more.
It’s a very complicated project, it tackles a lot of subjects and a lot of genres. That’s why we looked to compare notes as much as possible at the JCM, and we’re especially proud of being selected for the Script Lab. The writing phase will be crucial; it needs to be measured and it has to speak to young audiences, who the film is geared towards, but also to adults, who should be able to recognise the choices they themselves made. So not only does the prize encourage us to press on with the project, and confirm that we’re on the right path, it gives us an opportunity to write even more, and to gain support from a few script consultants too. We’re also working alongside co-producer Bostjan Ikovic to organise a few location scouting trips at the very beginning of the year.

The jury rewarded the project’s potential to become a strong European co-production, given the success your previous collaboration with Samuele Rossi enjoyed. How important is this to you?
This project continues the journey I’m going on as a producer of films for new generations and, therefore, for children. And it continues my partnership with Samuele Rossi, a director who immediately embraced this whim of mine, and who, with Glassboy, really began to mature as a filmmaker. Cinema is primarily about teamwork and no doubt this paid off. I’m also pleased, though, that our genuine desire to draw attention to the importance of audiovisual stories for children has been rewarded. We believe that in order to save cinema from losing viewers, we need to start winning over the newer generations again, because they’re the audience of tomorrow. We need to create opportunities - in other words, products - which draw them back into cinemas or at least provide them with opportunities to dream and for magic.

Are you noticing any important, post-pandemic changes in international markets for children’s films?
The market is still renewing itself and expanding rapidly. It’s definitely livelier, given that even this product will have to contend with platforms and first and foremost YouTube and TikTok. Now kids have found a new form of audiovisual entertainment, made up of influencers or youtubers, which often damages or alters the concept of narration as we’ve always known it.

It’s right, in this respect, that we give as much as we can to this type of production, and ensure that producers like myself, or authors like Samuele, in Europe, decide to carry over their experience in arthouse cinema into the children’s and young people’s market. We’ve still got many important stories to write.

Are platforms a risk and nothing more, or do they also present opportunities for comparison and growth?
Monsters don’t always want to hurt us, and they always bring about positive change in the market. What I’m realising is that platforms place greater emphasis on producing content for kids, more so than traditional broadcasters until now. The important thing is that the algorithm doesn’t flatten tastes or stories too much, or confine those products to certain age groups. In short, it’s always good to leave a dedicated space for stories for children, who have and should always have the right to be children, so that they don’t grow up too soon.

(Translated from Italian)