12/09/2025 - VENICE 2025: The Italian director chats about his documentary, revealing the undiscovered region of East Texas which voted for Trump

(© Moris Puccio & Debora Savian/Giornate degli Autori)

Between the vertiginous pine forests and swamps of East Texas, a hidden community calmly goes about its business, far from the spotlight. Super young oilmen, families in a class of their own, travelling clowns and women who embody the historical memory of this region: these individuals and so many others like them are the protagonists of Giovanni Troilo’s documentary, Life Beyond the Pine Curtain – America the Invisible [+see also:
interview: Giovanni Troilo
film profile], which was presented in Venice Nights within the 22nd Giornate degli Autori line-up. In the days leading up to the most recent elections, which saw Trump take command of the USA, the Italian director followed four different characters living between the towns of Gladewater, Longview and Kilgore. It’s a subtle and poetic portrait, enriched by the voice and writings of Joe R. Lansdale, an acclaimed author in contemporary American literature who hails from this region.

CinecittàNews: The first thing we think when watching this film is: what on earth is an Italian man doing in East Texas during the US elections?
Giovanni Troilo: The basic idea, given that I’d been there for Obama’s election, was to try to be there for these most recent elections, because I felt they’d prove decisive. We wanted to be present at a time which was likely to mark a historic turning point for the West. We spoke about it with Sky, who decided to produce the film with Chiarafama, with the idea of presenting an unusual perspective on the elections. We also did a lot of liaising with Federico Leoni, who’s the Sky TG24 correspondent in the US, over which state we should go to, and we thought of the swing states, which are key for election victory. But we didn’t know which ones to choose. Then, like some kind of apparition, thanks not least to Sebastiano Pezzani, who’s Joe Lansdale’s friend and translator, we got the idea of trying to focus on a state where the election results would be clear: so Texas, or rather East Texas, where almost all of Lansdale’s literary works are set.

So it was Lansdale who brought you to those places and not vice versa?
Exactly, it was like an infinity mirror with him. He dragged us through the swamps in that region, inspiring the film’s imagery, and we found that the landscapes in his works seemed tailor-made for the film. When we hear them in the film, there’s a slight synchronicity which works in the story’s favour.

Everything is rooted in the elections, the macro-story which then fades to the background, creating space for the micro-story revolving around the film’s protagonists.
The first story we took home was dedicated to the elections and the context was in the background. This gave us full and total freedom to invert things and focus on a reverse angle, keeping the elections in the background and trying to focus attention on the protagonists’ lives.

How did you go about choosing your protagonists from inside this community?
That’s the main dilemma: you want to create a huge collective story, but how do you paint a picture which makes sense, and which isn’t excessive in any way, but which is still exhaustive. Some of the characters were introduced to us by Joe Lansdale: Lois, for example, is a friend of his. Another is a local journalist. We spent time with these people in the early weeks, to gain acceptance from these communities which aren’t particularly open. You have to earn their trust so that they’re able to open up to the cameras. And then, very naturally, these four stories came together. A few of them stayed separate from the others, but it was very clear that these were the most important ones.

How important is the viewpoint of an Italian author, that distance between you and them?
I believe the best portraits come from people who don’t know you very well but who really want to get to know you. Because they reveal things that not even the person being depicted had considered. The same goes for places. Obviously, there’s the potential issue of being too attached to clichés, which are our worst enemy because they stop you from digging deeper. I believe it’s vital to work on relationships, to fully immerse yourself, to compromise, because if you don’t make any compromises, you’re not really connecting with the subject you’re exploring. The feeling I always get when I return home after these immersive experiences is that I’ve left a part of myself back there.

(Translated from Italian)