16/05/2014 - Filming will last around four months and will take place in a number of different Italian regions, with Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones and John C Reilly

Filming kicked off yesterday for Tale of Tales, the new film by Matteo Garrone (who won the Cannes Grand Prix in 2008 for Gomorrah [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Domenico Procacci
interview: Jean Labadie
interview: Matteo Garrone
film profile] and in 2011 for Reality [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Matteo Garrone
film profile]). The film is coproduced by Archimede, the director’s company and Le Pacte together with Jeremy Thomas for Recorded Picture and Rai Cinema, with support from MiBACT and Eurimages.

The film, which will be in English, will star Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones and John C Reilly, with Alba Rohrwacher (in competition in Cannes with Le meraviglie [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alice Rohrwacher
interview: Tiziana Soudani
film profile] by sister Alice) and other Italian actors. Director of photography is Peter Suschitzky, long-term collaborator of David Cronenberg. The original score is to be composed by Alexandre Desplat, who is a six-time Oscar nominee and is collaborating with Garrone for the second time after Reality. Shooting, which will last four months, will take place in various regions across Italy and will include mysterious landscapes, secret castles villas and gardens.

The film is loosely based on “Tale of Tales” by Giambattista Basile, the famous author of Neapolitan tales from the 17^th century. The project, whose screenplay was written by Garrone himself together with Edoardo Albinati, Ugo Chiti and Massimo Gaudioso, sees itself as a giant fresco of the baroque period, told through stories of three sovereigns ruling under different dynasties.

“I chose to get closer to the world of Basile because I found in his tales that space between reality and fantasy, which always characterised my artistic research,” the director said. “The stories told in Tale of Tales describe a world in which life’s opposites are combined: ordinary and extraordinary, magic and everyday, what is regal and what is common, terrible and gratifying.”

Matteo Garrone’s new film will be sold across the world by London-based company HanWay Films.

(Translated from Italian)