Presented at the International Film Critics’ Week of the 83rd Venice Film Festival, Before the War is the first feature by Italian director Tommaso Usberti, a La Fémis graduate who won an award in 2017 in the Cinéfondation competition at the Cannes Film Festival with the short Deux égarés sont morts.

Cineuropa : Did the film’s core idea spring from the main character or from the setting where the story unfolds?
Tommaso Usberti : Both, but more from the territory to begin with: the Po Valley, in northern Italy, in Lombardy, and in particular Piadena, a small village where many people cross paths. It’s the region my father’s family comes from, and I used to spend summers there as a child. It’s a highly conflictual area, full of contradictions, one of the regions where fascism was born 100 years ago and where today Italy’s far-right parties have a strong foothold. But it’s also a very wealthy region, with big farms, industrial livestock operations, countryside of monocultures. There’s plenty of work, hence a lot of immigration, and people from all over the world cross paths in this village. So it’s quite a peculiar mix. Everything is geared towards productivity, and I feel something oppressive there in the overexploitation of the land, of animals, etc., and in the attitude towards foreigners, with a kind of violence inflicted upon them.

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How did you want to approach the character of Guido?
He embodies a macho youth that follows in the footsteps of the dominant group. I wanted to talk about violence and toxic masculinity from the point of view of someone who is immersed in them, because it’s more disturbing to see it that way. He represents a disoriented, impressionable youth. All over the world there’s a return to a sort of old-school virility, to values associated with different fascisms. And in Italy, where the far right is in power, you see this a lot, all the more so in a village like the one in the film where everyone knows and watches everyone else: there’s a cult of the body, of violence, of weapons. So I wanted to portray a somewhat lost young man in search of a purpose, and therefore easy prey for headhunters recruiting for foreign mercenary militias. In fact, there are similarities with the young Europeans who left to wage jihad.

As a counterpoint, you depict his complicated love story with a young Kosovar woman.
I wanted to start from a negative character who is nonetheless shaken by something, and about whom we might hope that he could perhaps change, have a wake-up call. His family disapproves of this encounter. Maya is very young, so she also suffers what happens to her, but she’s stronger and wants to fight back much more than Guido does. It’s a very short story, over a few days, but it may prove decisive for him.

Nature is very present in the film. As a contrast to human nature?
Yes. In this region, the contrast is very clear between the vast expanses of monocultures, the industrial farms, etc., and, very close by, a very lush nature with lots of water, wild animals, and so on. There’s also the fact that Guido hunts: he attacks nature while he himself is like a caged animal, cramped in this small village. I also wanted to denounce violence against animals, through hunting or in industrial farming.

What about your rather radical visual and sound choices?
I wanted us to be immersed with the character, with a sense of present time and long takes where the camera follows Guido. It’s the height of summer, there’s music playing all the time, there’s a numbing, heavy, sweltering quality. I wanted to address things that aren’t simple and can be unpleasant, but with an accessible form, so I referenced genres we’re used to seeing. But I sought a radical edge in the form, in the way of filming, and I pushed the sliders: loading up the colours in the grade, with the music, etc. Pasolini is a major source of inspiration for me: his films reveal the primal instincts of human beings. It can be very brutal, but there’s also a lot of gentleness, no cynicism, always hope, an authenticity in the faces, and places we’re not used to seeing, often forgotten. I tried, in my own way, to go in that direction.