The story of a lady who desperately needs to undertake a daughter, “Vittoria” is the third characteristic from directing companions Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman. On the Cairo Movie Pageant, the place the movie is displaying within the Worldwide Competitors, Kauffman sat down with Selection.
How did you begin out?
I at all times needed to be a photojournalist. I labored for Al Jazeera as a one-man-band reporter. My directing companion Alessandro was a cinephile and he was in Berlin working in documentaries. We have been good associates from Florence the place I partly grew up. I began to get bored with TV. There have been so many tales I couldn’t movie as a result of they weren’t newsworthy. We ended up each shifting again to Italy as a result of our dads have been dying each on the identical time. Bizarre coincidence.
We did a documentary “Butterfly” (2018) on Italy’s first feminine boxer to go to the Olympics, Irma Testa. She’s from a small city south of Naples. Throughout “Butterfly,” we met one of many secondary characters on this city who turned the topic of “Californie” (2021), which was our first narrative characteristic. It was a combination. However ethically, you’d by no means name it a documentary. It was directed, and there was a mise en scene. And once more, identical mechanism, we met a secondary character of that movie and we acquired to know her private story, and she or he turned the protagonist of this movie: “Vittoria.”
‘Vittoria,’ by Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman, is the story of a lady who desperately needs to undertake a daughter.
So this was your second hybrid documentary?
It’s not a hybrid doc: it’s a scripted movie. The entire screenplay is written, based mostly on the story of this one household. There’s no actual life taking place, or fly-on-the-wall moments. Simply the true folks reliving their experiences.
What occurs if the true folks can’t act?
We had a bonus. We’d already labored with the protagonist within the earlier movie, and we liked her, however her complete household needed to work too. Marilena is a hairdresser and her husband Gennaro is a carpenter. This picket cabinet in her salon had been damaged for years and she or he’s at all times complaining about it. It’s in their very own life: it already exists. We took her into one room, him into one other, defined the scene, and shot it on our iPhones. Once we checked out it, it was a right away response. He labored completely, too. It was unbelievable.
How did you employ the script?
Marilena and Gennaro by no means discovered strains they usually by no means learn the script. The screenplay was extra for us to determine the place the film was going. Even the dialogues have been written out. However they communicate within the Neapolitan dialect. We actually can’t write of their language. Their dialect is thick.
Have been there any disagreements about your interpretations? Or between them?
Some. There are inventive liberties. That’s why rehearsals have been so necessary. They may inform us their issues, after which we may consider. In the event that they didn’t get what we wrote, possibly that’s simply not how they noticed the world normally. Then we’d again off. We’d continually adapt the screenplay based mostly on these rehearsals.
Adoption has turn into a political soccer in Italy. Have been you consciously making a political movie?
I had no clue about worldwide adoption. It was actually the encounter with this lady who’s following this irrational impulse. Her father dies and she or he has a dream, the place he brings her a bit lady, and she will’t get this daughter out of her thoughts. She goes up towards her household, establishments. She’s not the cookie cutter picture of the adoption world: the couple who can’t have children. It’s an egotistical want that turns into this spirit of welcoming another person. If it was fictional, and it went by way of all of the screenwriting labs, they’d have stated: it’s best to make your protagonist extra sympathetic. We debated it, however she’s an actual individual. You possibly can’t flip these folks into one thing they’re not.
How did they react after they noticed the movie?
They liked it. They’re simply bawling. And going to the Venice Movie Pageant for them, this carpenter and this hair stylist in Naples, was a dream. However the movie itself was a robust expertise, reenacting the entire thing. In a few of the extra heated scenes, it felt like they have been utilizing the digicam to lastly say what they actually needed to say to the opposite individual.
What subsequent?
One other story from the city. That is a couple of man who’s doing a job that takes him from France to Naples. But additionally I really feel like this fashion of cinema may apply fairly effectively to sure conditions within the Center East. I don’t need to generalize, however I really feel like sure nationwide traits lend itself to this.
This interview has been edited and condensed for readability.
