13/03/2007

Two inseparable teenagers without much ambition or interest in life – Apollonio, called Pollo, the son of a rich Jewish antiques dealer from Rome, and Marco, nicknamed Curry, an Indian boy adopted as a baby by an Italian couple – take off for India in search of their identity.

These are the main characters of Flying Lessons [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (Lezioni di volo) by Francesca Archibugi, a director who has always been attentive to that which moves younger audiences – such as in Mignon Has Come to Stay (1987), The Great Pumpkin (1992) and Shooting the Moon (1998) – although she herself refuses the label of a filmmaker who “specialises in childhood”: "I’m not the one who puts kids in films, it’s the others who raise them. I work on characters of various ages and try to portray individuals", she said.

The paths of the two troubled 18 year-olds (played by the melancholy Andrea Miglio Risi and the sparkling Tom Karumathy) are crossed by a young doctor (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) who works at rescue centre of a humanitarian organisation in the Tar Desert. "My character needs love”, said the actress after the film’s press screening, “like anyone who’s lived a nomadic life, and she happens to come across an adolescent who admires her without ever judging her. They are both pushed to changed the direction in which their lives are headed".

With the light tones of a comedy, the film tackles the themes of the rites of passage into adulthood, the search for one’s own roots, the confrontation between parents and children and cultural diversity, against a backdrop of a colourful and contradictory India. Shot between Delhi, Bombay, Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, the Cattleya production was in development for a long time and is the first Italian feature to be made with India (Khussro Film), in collaboration with the UK (Aquarius) and France (Babe Productions).

01 Distribution will release Flying Lessons on 120 Italian screens on March 16.

(Translated from Italian)