After Hannah and Monica, Italian director Andrea Pallaoro is returning to the Venice International Film Festival’s competition with The Echo Chamber, an Italian-Belgian co-production starring Luca Marinelli (winner of the Volpi Cup and EFA nominee for Martin Eden and recently seen in The Eight Mountains and Paternal Leave), Alicia Vikander (seen last year in The Wizard of the Kremlin) and Susan Sarandon.

Selected for the 83rd edition of the Venice festival, the film is produced by Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima, Carlotta Calori and Viola Prestieri for Indigo Film in league with Rai Cinema, and by Jacques-Henri Bronckart and Tatjana Kozar for Versus Production.

"From the very beginning of my career, the Venice Film Festival has played a fundamental role, accompanying my films on all of their journeys,” enthused Pallaoro, who lives and works in the United States and who previously took part in the event’s Horizons section in 2013 by way of his debut feature, Medeas. “Returning there this year to launch The Echo Chamber into the world, alongside the extraordinary cast and crew and in front of an audience who’ll be encountering it for the very first time, makes it a profoundly meaningful moment."

The Echo Chamber brings to the big screen the final screenplay penned by Bernardo Bertolucci in league with Ilaria Bernardini (who wrote Be Loved and the series Citadel: Diana) and Ludovica Rampoldi (whose most recent works include Primavera, My Tennis Maestro and A Brief Affair, the latter of which she also directed). The film is described as a love story in which the boundaries between presence and absence, care and dependence, and desire and control blur to the point of dissolving. The protagonists, Leo and Anne, pursue each other, brush past one another, lose and then search for one other. They can neither leave nor break free. Meanwhile, Ava’s voice resounds through the rooms, travelling through time and bringing that which endures or which can no longer be contained to the surface.

"The Echo Chamber is a film we’re deeply attached to,” explained Bernardini and Rampoldi. “For years, after the death of Bernardo Bertolucci, we feared that this story, which was conceived and written with so much fun and enthusiasm, would never be made. Returning to the script was like being able to go back into a much-loved house that had suddenly been lost to us, opening the doors and windows and letting the light back in again."

Cinematography is by Mexico’s Diego García (Cemetery of Splendour, Our Times), editing by Paola Freddi (Bravo Bene!, Another End, Sicilian Letters, to name just a few of her latest works), production design is by Gaspare De Pascali (Duse, Primavera), costumes are by Antonella Cannarozzi (Finally Dawn) and sound production is by Belgian Guilhem Donzel. The film’s original score is by French composer Clément Ducol, who won the Oscar for Best Original Song with El Mal from Emilia Pérez.

The film was made with the support of the Italian Ministry of Culture, with backing from the Lazio Region and the Roma Lazio Film Commission. At the European level, the project benefited from support from Creative Europe MEDIA as well as from the Belgian federal government’s Tax Shelter and Inver Tax Shelter initiatives. Additional partners include Paradise City Sales, Be tv, Proximus and O'Brother Distribution.

The Echo Chamber will be released in Italian cinemas on 10 September, distributed by 01 Distribution. International sales are handled by Paradise City Sales, who will represent the film alongside UTA for North America.