23/01/2024 - The Italian director’s sophomore feature is a love story with an international cast including Gael García Bernal, Renate Reinsve, Bérénice Bejo, and Olivia Williams

Another End [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Piero Messina
film profile], the sophomore feature from Piero Messina, will premiere in Competition at the 74th Festival Internazionale del Cinema di Berlino. Messina returns to filmmaking eight years after The Wait [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lou de Laâge
interview: Piero Messina
film profile], starring Juliette Binoche, which was presented in Competition at the Venice International Film Festival in 2015 and won the Globo d’Oro for Best First Feature handed out by the foreign press based in Italy.

An Italian, French, and British co-production, Another End stars an international cast: multi-award winner Gael García Bernal (whose last performance was in Cassandro by Roger Ross Williams); Norway’s Renate Reinsve (winner of the Best Actress award at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival for her performance in The Worst Person in the World [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joachim Trier
film profile]), French star Bérénice Bejo (seen recently in Final Cut [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michel Hazanavicius
film profile], The Hummingbird [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Benedetta Porcaroli
film profile] and The Movie Teller [+see also:
trailer
interview: Lone Scherfig
film profile]) and British actress Olivia Williams (the Queen’s consort Camilla in the hit series The Crown).

“Another End is a love story. It’s about the love which lives in words, thoughts, memories, but which most of all lives and grows silently in bodies. Hidden. Like a secret of the body,” says the director of the film, whose synopsis reads: “Sal's empty eyes seem to live only on memories since he lost Zoe, the love of his life. Memories, like fragments of a broken mirror that cannot be put back together. His sister Ebe, who looks at her brother with growing concern, suggests he tries Another End, a new technology that promesses to alleviate the pain of separation by bringing back to life, for a short time, the conscience of the departed. This is how Sal finds Zoe again, but in the body of another woman. An unknown body in which he mysteriously recognises his wife. What had been broken suddenly seems to recompose.

Indeed, Another End grants Sal the time to share again a bit of life with Zoe, to love her again, to be loved again, to finally be able to tell her goodbye. But it is a fragile, ephemeral, insidious joy and, when the programme comes to an end, Sal does not intend to meekly watch the dissolution of his love, the definite loss of his wife. Perhaps love can really survive, and bodies can promise eternity."

Another End was produced by Indigo Film with Rai Cinema, in association with France’s TF1, in association with the UK’s Anton and in collaboration with Number 9 Films. The film’s international sales are handled by French company Newen Connect. It will be released in Italian cinema on 21 March via 01 Distribution.

(Translated from Italian)