09/06/2008

Pupi Avati makes no bones about his ambitions to take part in the upcoming Venice Film Festival. “The festival has always brought me luck, I’d like to be selected,” says the director of the recent The Hideout [+see also:
trailer
film profile], who has had nine films at Venice, from 1983 (A School Outing) to 2005 (La seconda notte di nozze [+see also:
trailer
film profile]).

His new film, entitled Il papà di Giovanna (“Giovanna’s Father”), will be released by Medusa in September (exactly 40 years after Avati began shooting his first film, Balsamus, on September 12, 1968). Set in a Bologna “that oozes poverty,” between 1938 and 1954, it tells the story of a young girl (Alba Rohrwacher) who killed her best friend with a razor.

“What struck me most was how there was no moral judgment of [Giovanna],” said the actress. “She’s seen in a very compassionate light, also through the eyes of her father, who decides to stay by her side.” The father is played by Silvio Orlando, who found in his character the feelings of guilt of someone who “feels responsible for not having understood his own daughter’s problems. Being a parent is a difficult job, virtually impossible.”

Yet for Avati the man is “an extraordinary father, much different from the one I depicted in La cena per farli conoscere. That parent had many faults, he was similar to me, but this man is so generous that I can only imagine what he must be like.”

“We’ve made a film with a huge heart,” assures the director, who rounded out his cast with Francesca Neri (as Giovanna’s mother), Serena Grandi and Ezio Greggio, the highly popular comic and TV host who makes his debut here in a dramatic role.

(Translated from Italian)