06/09/2010

“The film interweaves two stories: one is the fruit of my imagination, the other emerged from the documentary I shot in Melfi for MTV”. Indeed, Hai Paura del Buio [+see also:
trailer
film profile] – Massimo Coppola’s debut feature after various interesting documentaries – combines two highly symbolic worlds of contemporary society.

On the one hand is Eva (Alexandra Pirici, previously seen in Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), a sweet 20-year-old Romanian girl, who is “as proud as a New Wave heroine, very different from our idea of Romanian 'immigrant' women”, according to the director. She arrives in Italy and heads decisively for the city of Melfi, where she follows a mysterious woman’s every step.

On the other is Anna (newcomer Erica Fontana), a young worker at the Fiat plant in Lucania, who offers generous hospitality to Eva, who is the same age, after she discovers her sleeping in her car one day.

Thoughtful, dark and controlled, Hai Paura del Buio is a sort of film noir of the soul, in which two women emblematic of our crisis-stricken Europe (the film comes shortly after media interest in the fate of the Fiat plant in Melfi) meet and come face to face with each other, until Eva’s mysterious reason for coming to Melfi is revealed.

Coppola commented: “People have said my film isn’t very Italian. I consider this a compliment, especially if it refers to the visual language I’ve chosen, which is abstract, sober and pared-down. I consume and produce Italian and international culture, and I don’t believe in the concept of national culture”.

Produced by Indigo Film, in collaboration with Bim and Italian MTV, with funding from the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (MiBAC) and backing from the MEDIA Programme, Hai Paura del Buio will be released by Bim at the end of September.