Leonardo Di Costanzo • Director of Elisa
"It’s the mystery of evil that resides in the ordinary that struck me in that story”
- VENICE 2025: The Italian director tells us what pushed him to tell the story of a normal woman who has committed a horrible crime and looks for a road to redemption
Elisa (Barbara Ronchi), 35, has been in prison for 10 years, condemned for having killed her big sister and burned her corpse, without apparent motive. Her meetings with a criminologist (Roschdy Zem) could bring her to accepting her guilt to the full, and heading towards possible redemption. Elisa [+see also:
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interview: Leonardo Di Costanzo
film profile] by Leonardo Di Costanzo, in competition at the 82nd Venice Film Festival, is inspired by the studies of criminologists Adolfo Ceretti and Lorenzo Natali, who for years have been conducting research on violent behaviour and the authors of heinous crimes, including those committed by seemingly unsuspicious people. We talked about it with the director.
Cineuropa: The film is inspired by an essay of “criminology of the encounter” about a real case from Italy. What struck you about this book?
Leonardo Di Costanzo: I’ve known the author, Adolfo Ceretti, for a while and I had already consulted him when I directed The Inner Cage [+see also:
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interview: Leonardo Di Costanzo
film profile]. I appreciated this idea of not nailing the guilt bearer to the wall, like a butterfly to observe, and instead to give the possibility of having another life after the crime. Otherwise, he or she will forever remain a dangerous person for society and for themselves. I find that this philosophy is in fact a political statement, of transformation, of being willing to listen to the other. And if we are victims of the offence, listening to the other can move us away from the feeling of hatred in which we crystallise ourselves.
Is this a violence that can widen to fratricides between peoples?
Certainly, if you transpose these individual dynamics to groups. Nelson Mandela in South Africa found himself dealing with Whites on one side, and Blacks on the other, he found the need to create a commission in which victims and executioners would meet, in front of cameras from national TV. In other cases, as in post-war Italy, there’s been instead simply forgiveness without a confrontation.
In the case of the film, it is a woman who has committed a terrible crime. A normal woman, who self-identifies as “invisible”.
I’ve often filmed guilt - in The Inner Cage, in The Intruder [+see also:
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film review
trailer
interview: Leonardo Di Costanzo
film profile] - drawing attention however to the strategies adopted by society or the group to relate to guilt. During the processing of The Inner Cage, I had the desire to talk about looking guilt in the face and to move the dynamics - what to do? - in the spectator. It is the spectator who will have to take a position, within themselves. Therefore, from a cinematic point of view, the film had to be as neutral as possible, with an almost hidden, minimalistic mise-en-scène.
Was the work with actors important in order to attain that?
It was important, because in all the films I make I work a lot with the actors, because the beginning of shooting. The role of the criminologist, Roschdy Zem, is very difficult, because he has to listen, and for an actor, it is complicated to communicate something only through listening! We therefore worked on the kind of position he must take, which interventions he can do. Because he couldn’t be fully “welcoming”. In fact, he acts punctually and when she hides, looks for excuses, placing the guilt on her mother for example, he brings her back on track. He asks her to call a homicide what she defines as “the facts”. He brings her to say that it wasn’t a gesture of anger but rather that there was a very precise plan. There was a welcome, to give confidence, but at the same time he couldn’t be passive in this confrontation. Because at the basis, there was Elisa’s huge need to come to terms with her own life. She is an intelligent woman and she knows the criminologist’s work very well: she has studied his books in jail and knows very well that meeting him means opening the drawers of her own memory. It’s the mystery of evil that resides in the ordinary that struck me in that story.
(Translated from Italian)
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