12/11/2024 - The director of the “film event” of the year spoke to us about the prize she won in Haugesund, the Eurimages Audentia Award which promotes gender equality in the European audiovisual industry

Actress Paola Cortellesi’s directorial debut, There Is Still Tomorrow [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paola Cortellesi
film profile], produced by Wildside and Vision Distribution, was the film event of the year. Presented in a premiere as the opening film of Rome Film Fest, it was subsequently distributed in Italian cinemas on 26 October 2023 and sold 5.4 million tickets, with earnings totalling close to 37 million euros. In March 2024, There Is Still Tomorrow was released in France, where it pulled in more than 4 million euros at the box office. The movie has now been sold more or less all over the world.

There Is Still Tomorrow is shot in black and white in tribute to neorealism and is set in post-war Rome where Delia, who’s married to a man who abuses her and is a mother to three children, fights courageously for a better future for everyone. One of the dozens of festivals the film has taken part in, collecting an array of awards in the process, is the Haugesund Norwegian Film Festival where Cortellesi walked away with the Audience Award and Eurimages’ Audentia Award which promotes improved gender equality in the European film industry.

The Audentia Award jury justified their choice as follows: “We were captivated by the (...) film’s cinematographic playfulness as well as its ability to combine serious themes and humour in the form of a classic melodrama. We had no idea (...) that domestic abuse, the female struggle, and changes in society could be depicted so confidently and wittily”. We sat down with the director to discuss all this.

Cineuropa: Do you think the crossover between drama and humour, which the Audentia Award jury underlined in their explanations for their choice, has been key to the film’s universal success?
Paola Cortellesi: I think the comedy aspect has definitely helped, yes. In the stories my grandmothers told about life at that time, there were always funny, bumbling elements which were true to their time. I wanted humour to act as a guide for viewers as they followed this realist story about an everyday reality which was sometimes absurd and naive, not in order to sugarcoat the violence but to show the cruelty of it and their search for a way out with greater force. I wanted to make the more negative characters ridiculous, like Ivano and his father, to take away their strength: if a baddie is ridiculous, you can fight him, he’s not frightening.

Women are still in the minority when it comes to key roles behind the cameras in the film world. The most recent report from the European Audiovisual Observatory states that only 26% of European feature film directors are women. In Italy, films by women directors rose from 21 in 2019 to 41 in 2023. Vermiglio, the Mountain Bride [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Maura Delpero
film profile] by Maura Delpero won the Silver Lion in Venice and has been chosen to represent Italy at the Oscars. Francesca Comencini also garnered acclaim with The Time it Takes [+see also:
film review
interview: Francesca Comencini
film profile]. But on average women receive lower budgets than those made available to men. The problem, when it comes to gender equality, lies mainly in the resources which are or are not made available to them. What are your thoughts on this?
The numbers are growing and I’m really happy about that. But we know that the road towards equality in the film world is long, too. I don’t know what the budgets were for Vermiglio and The Time it Takes but I do know how valuable and beautiful they are. The talent of those two extraordinary directors and the success their films are enjoying represents another step forwards, towards a course correction in favour of all the women working as directors.

In recent months, the success of There Is Still Tomorrow has seen you meeting lots of students and everyday people who love going to the cinema and talking about films. What kind of audiences did you meet and how was this experience for you?
In truth, lots of the viewers I met weren’t avid cinema-goers. The treat, for me, was to see them in cinemas -  potentially on the advice of friends or family – to see that they were happy, to listen to their memories, their thoughts, and the emotions of women and men who wanted to share personal experiences with the people around them, who were no longer strangers to them at that point in time. Getting to do this with thousands of very young students was a great opportunity for me to compare, contrast and grow.

How important is it, at a time when cinemas are at peak crisis point, to “accompany” your film and to promote it, making your own presence felt as a director?
I think it’s fundamental to accompany stories and to convey your passion and speak about your work. We talk about: “the magic of cinema”, but while the on-screen result might convey something magical, the creative process, the work carried out on set and all that follows are all a craft; the combination of many different components devised, created and put together by people with special skills. Speaking about how the film and our dreams came together lends strength and dignity to our profession.

(Translated from Italian)