The producers of La Vita Oscena
(Obscene Life), about a teenager who is on a path of
self-destruction before eventually 'finding himself' on the way
to becoming a cult poet, appealed for a distributor for the film
Thursday at the 71st Venice Film Festival, where the movie
screened in competition in the Horizons section.
"What is surprising is that an all-Italian film that only
cost 650,000 euros and involved (director Renato) De Maria,
(poet) Aldo Nove, (director of photography Daniele) Ciprì and
(actress) Isabella Ferrari still does not have a distributor,"
said former teen heartthrob actor and associate producer
Riccardo Scamarcio.
"The tax credit was fundamental for us," added Ferrari, who
co-produced the film and plays the mother of the protagonist
Andrea, interpreted by French rising star Clement Matayer.
"Now there is a new decree that has increased the tax
credit further, there is no longer any reason not to invest in
cinema," she concluded.
The film is inspired by Nove's autobiography of the same
name, about a young boy who loses both parents within the space
of a few months and embarks on a psychedelic journey of excess
involving drugs, sex and self-destruction before eventually
becoming a poet.
"It is a story in which everyone can recognise themselves,"
Ferrari said.
"I wanted to tell a coming-of-age story with a universal
reach," explained the director, De Maria, who was inspired by
the likes of cult American director David Lynch and the
confrontational, nihilistic visions of Argentine director Gaspar
Noe.
"The most important thing for me was to create something
visually new, to tell the story of a psychedelic voyage in a way
no one has ever seen before".
As well, three films vying for the Golden Lion screened on
Thursday.
In Ghesseha (Tales), acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Rakhshan
Banietemad, once again displayed her unique style combining the
tropes of fiction and documentary film to revisit mostly female
characters from her previous films, exploring universal issues
through the eyes of people from different layers of society but
with one thing in common: they are passionate and they are in
love.
From France, Xavier Beauvois brought viewers his La Rancon
de la Gloire (The Price of Glory). Set in 1970s Switzerland and
based on a true story, it is the tragicomic tale of two
small-time crooks who decide to steal the coffin of Charlie
Chaplin, who has just died and is reputed to be fabulously
wealthy.
Also competing on Thursday was American director Joshua
Oppenheimer's The Look of Silence, which follows on his previous
documentary The Act of Killing in telling the story of the
anti-communist purge of 1965-65 in Indonesia, when death squads
tortured and murdered an estimated half million people.
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