Indivisibili was one of the big winners at this year’s David Di Donatello Awards in Italy. Nominated for 17 awards this film took home 5 Davids and had it’s North America premier last year at TIFF. We are looking forward to having this film in Toronto, Vaughan, Hamilton, Montreal and Quebec City as part of #ICFF17! For tickets please click here.
Indivisibili (Indivisible)
In Indivisibili (Indivisible) eighteen-year-old conjoined twins Daisy and Viola (twins Angela and Marianna Fontana) have been supporting their family earning as much as €80,000 a year performing at weddings and first holy communion festivities, but are they succeeding because they are pop stars, or because they are side show geeks?
Angela Fontana And Marianna Fontana
Whatever the reason, their parents couldn’t waste the girls’ hard-earned money any more efficiently if they tried.
Their home in the seaside town of Castel Volturno (north of Naples) is furnished with top of the line everything and their dad, Peppe (Massimiliano Rossi) and his wife Titti (played by David di Donatello winner Antonia Truppo) won’t win any parents-of-the-year awards any time soon. When the girls were little, life was pretty good for them, too. They loved singing and each other and didn’t know any other way of living. But can they, should they be separated?
Director Edoardo De Angelis cleaned up at this year’s David di Donatello Awards (6 awards) and Indivisibili was on the list of films considered to represent Italy at the Oscars; in fact, Paolo Sorrentino famously said that it should have been selected.
“The first time I knew I had a hit was when the screenwriter pitched me the idea; the second was when I met the girls,” says De Angelis. “They were the body and the soul of the story.”
Angela and Marianna Fontana, professional singers in real life and new to acting, believe it or not. “We identified so much with the characters”, the say. “We read and read and read the script many times; actually before we even read the script we knew we wanted to make the movie.”
They say that they’ve been “living in a kind of symbiosis” their whole life, are very close to each other, and can identify with the pain of separation even though they aren’t physically connected. “The story is about ‘amore veramente indivisibile” (truly indivisible love) and talks about a psychological bond that is even stronger than the physical one,”, they say.
indivisibili
Indivisibili uses the unusual dialect of the girls’ region making it necessary for subtitles, even for Italians. “It’s a very obscure dialect,” says De Angelis, “and the idea was to give them a language that was a sort of mysterious code between them.”
As do all good directors on a budget,De Angelis used the local talent for everything from actors to technicians . “With the cuts in government funding for cinema,” says De Angelis “we have learned how to make films with little money. We talk about reality in our films,” he says, “and they are made with little money, but we are free with the way we make them. Even with the mainstream film distributors we have a kind of freedom to produce the kind of realism that we want to.”
Antonia Truppo, Indivisibili
Antonia Truppo won best supporting actress for her role in last year’s big hit Mi Chiamavano Jeeg Robot and then again this year for her role in this film. De Angelis says of her, “I always admire beautiful actresses that are willing to and so successfully take on the parts for unattractive characters, as she does playing Nunzia in Indivisibili. Nunzia is a bad mother on so many levels, is drunk most of the time, and probably not faithful to her husband.”
“Antonia’s a great human being,”says De Angelis. “She arrived at the audition with a completely different idea about the character, but after one reading she immediately changed. This showed how really smart and flexible she is as an actress.”
