An Italian but cosmopolitan birthday
Not far from Rome, on the coast of Sabaudia (a city of functionalist architectures yet immersed in a landscape tied to the myth of Ulysses and the sorceress Circe), shooting is underway on Il compleanno (“The Birthday”), the second feature film by Marco Filiberti.
The plot, two couples who spend a summer together after many years, should not deceive: more than Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill, the film is an update on the atmospheres of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema.
The main character, according to the director (whose debut feature Poco più di un anno fa screened at the Berlinale), “is a man whose fate it is to upset the other characters, the element that subverts the order of things”.
He is played by Brazilian model Thyago Alves, making his big screen debut, who in the film plays the son of Alessandro Gassman and Michela Cescon. The other couple is made up Portuguese actress Maria de Medeiros and Massimo Poggio, the latter whom, says Filiberti, “from this encounter will see his certainties questioned, even emotional certainties”.
The unusually cosmopolitan cast includes Piera Degli Esposti and Bulgarian actor Christo Jivkov, in a role that the filmmaker had originally written for himself. “But I preferred to concentrate fully on the mise-en-scene, and on directing the actors. I have no regrets, I’m crazy about them,” said the director.
The film is produced by Italy’s Zen Zero, run by Agnès Trincal and Caroline Locardi, for €2m: all private funds, in anticipation of possibly receiving public monies from the Ministry of Culture and the Rome and Lazio Film Commissions.
“It will be a very sensual film, on things that are felt but not said,” says Locardi, who appreciates Filiberti’s films above all their “style and aesthetics, the very opposite of realism”.
Upcoming films on the company’s slate include Jean-Christophe Gaudry’s documentary Run, maestro, run (a co-production with Switzerland and France) and numerous projects capable of blending quality and commercial appeal.
(Translated from Italian)
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