Italian sales agent Intramovies has acquired the worldwide sales rights to Agostino Ferrente’s documentary feature Selfie – The Possible Lives, which is set to world-premiere at the upcoming 24th edition of Alice nella Città, the independent parallel section of the Rome Film Fest (13-25 October). The documentary is the sole Italian title selected for Alice nella Città’s International Competition this year (see the news).

A decade after Ferrente first set out to portray the young people of Naples’ Rione Traiano neighbourhood, the Italian filmmaker returns to the material he shot for his acclaimed 2019 documentary Selfie – this time without filming a single new frame. Instead, Selfie – The Possible Lives draws entirely on footage that was left out of the earlier film, including screen tests and material relegated to the margins of its original narrative.

While Alessandro Antonelli and Pietro Orlando, the central figures in Selfie, remain part of the new film, Ferrente broadens the perspective towards the other guaglioni, or local youngsters, who had previously remained peripheral or had disappeared from the finished work altogether. Rather than investigating what subsequently happened to them, the documentary asks what kinds of lives they ever had the possibility of living.

Ferrente has conceived the project not as a conventional sequel, but as a “B-side”, or reverse shot of the earlier work, reconsidering discarded images through the distance created by the intervening years and reflecting, in turn, on memory, representation and the filmmaker’s responsibility towards his subjects.

The Italian-Swiss co-production was penned by Ferrente himself, and edited by Letizia Caudullo, Luca Mariani and Matteo Serman. Gianfilippo Pedote and Ferrente serve as producers. It is being produced by Casa delle Visioni and Pirata Manifatture Cinematografiche, with Luce Cinecittà, Anemone and Swiss outfit Dschoint Ventschr, in collaboration with Rai Cinema and Fondazione Paolo Bulgari. It received support from Italy’s Ministry of Culture – Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual. The project was also developed through the MIA Market’s Italians Doc It Better programme in 2025.

“This film questions whether any narrative can contain truth. Using footage that 'didn't fit' the original movie, Agostino Ferrente creates a deep meditation on time, memory, and both the impossibility and the necessity of documentary filmmaking. Selfie – The Possible Lives is not a conventional sequel, but a palimpsest. Its shift in perspective opens up a meta-cinematic dimension, prompting reflections on contemporary society and asking what kind of future is possible for younger generations,” Geremia Biagiotti, sales, marketing and acquisitions manager at Intramovies, told Cineuropa.

Ferrente, who is also a producer and cultural organiser, founded Rome’s Apollo 11 collective and co-founded the multicultural Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio. Selfie premiered in the Panorama strand of the 2019 Berlinale before going on to win the David di Donatello Award for Best Documentary, the Italian Golden Globe, a Nastro d’Argento and Best Documentary at the Luxembourg City Film Festival, as well as earning a nomination for European Documentary at the European Film Awards.