At the beginning of the 20th century, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show arrived in Rome to sell the legend of the American frontier to Italians by way of rifle fire and cowboy performances. Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis’ new movie, Heads or Tails?, which is set to be presented in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section, takes us into the arena of this horse-taming competition which is now legendary among Italian butteri and cowboys.

This new film by the directorial duo who brought The Tale of King Crab [+lire aussi :
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interview : Alessio Rigo de Righi et M…
fiche film] to Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight in 2021, scooped Eurimages’ Co-Production Development Prize in CineMart’s 2023 IFFR Pro event (read our interview). The film sees Rosa, the young wife of the local squire, falling in love with Santino, the buttero who wins the cowboy contest. When her husband is murdered, Rosa and Santino run away together, but justice, as ever, goes to the highest bidder and a hefty reward is placed on Santino’s head. With Buffalo Bill on their heels, Rosa dreams of America - the real America as opposed to the buffalo-heavy version sold on billboards, but her dream ultimately clashes with reality because fate wins out, as with any respectable western ballad.

The female lead in this film written by the two Italian-American directors in league with Carlo Salsa, is French-Finnish actress Nadia Tereszkiewicz, who made her mark with audiences in Forever Young [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], among other works. Starring alongside the actress is Italian Alessandro Borghi, who’s been nominated for a David di Donatello award six times and who eventually won the trophy for On My Skin [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], and who was seen in Battlefield [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] last year, as well as in the Netflix series Supersex [+lire aussi :
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fiche série]. In the role of Buffalo Bill we’ll find high-calibre American star John C. Reilly, who was Oscar-nominated for Chicago and who previously acted in the 2018 western with a difference, The Sisters Brothers [+lire aussi :
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fiche film]. The cast is rounded off by Argentina’s Peter Lanzani (Argentina, 1985, El ángel [+lire aussi :
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De Righi and Zoppis - whose films tend to focus on traditional folklore and legends and on the mechanics of the tradition of oral storytelling - first began their collaboration with the documentary short Belva Nera and the multi-award-winning documentary Il Solengo [+lire aussi :
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interview : Alessio Rigo de Righi et M…
fiche film], which was selected in the IFFR’s Bright Future section.

Heads or Tails? was co-produced by Italy and the USA by way of Ring Film and Cinema Inutile (USA) together with RAI Cinema, in association with Andromeda Film and Cinemaundici, and in collaboration with Volos Films Italia. World sales are entrusted to RAI Cinema International Distribution while the film’s release in Italian cinemas will fall to 01 Distribution.