Meet the young actors and actresses who are changing the face of Italian cinema.
Piuma
This month, the ICFF Jr. festival line up will be unveiled. Our Jr. festival is in it’s 5th year and promotes film as an art form using the platform of Italian Cinema, while providing students (ages 8 to 18) with exposure to International culture and language. The program includes feature films, documentaries, animations and shorts. It provides educators with an alternative teaching method that respects a variety of learning styles. In honour of our ICFF Jr. program these are the young actors and actresses who are changing the face of Italian cinema.
Blu Yoshimi, just 20, stars in Roan Johnson’s Piuma as the pregnant teenager Cate. The (already at her young age) world-weary Cate settles unrealistically into her predicament and she and her boyfriend Ferro set off an explosion that cause never-ending shock waves for the whole family.
Blu, a child star who played Nanni Moretti’s daughter in Caos Calmo (Quiet Chaos) is now setting out on a brilliant grown-up career:
“Quiet Chaos was my first movie for the big screen. It was an amazing experience. Since I mainly grew up with my mum Lidia Vitale who is herself a great and known actress in Italy, I always wanted to be an actress.”
As for playing a pregnant teenager in Piuma, Blu says, “This is one of the roles I always wanted to do. I was fond of Cate, Piuma and the story from the beginning because it reminded me a lot of my story with my mum. I also was an unexpected child and with this movie I could live the same experience from the opposite point of view and appreciate even more the work my mum has done.”
More than teaching about sex, I think Piuma can teach to people of all ages what it means to take responsibility. When something unexpected occurs it brings out the worst in us and it can be an occasion to confront ourselves.”
Blu Yoshimi at the Piuma premiere, the 2016 Venice Film Festival
Angela and Marianna Fontana
Twins Angela and Marianna Fontana are the stars of the award-winning film Indivisibili (Indivisible, the one that Paolo Sorrentino famously said could have won a Best Foreign Film Oscar) are just 19 and, believe it or not, new to acting.
Playing conjoined twins Daisy and Viola, they say “We identified so much with the characters. 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 that the conjoined twins in the film experienced even though they aren’t physically connected. The story is about “amore veramente indivisibile” (truly indivisible love), they say, they talk about about a psychological bond that is even stronger than the physical one.
Having been singers since they were fourteen they aren’t exactly strangers to an audience and the girls want to continue acting. Angela has been cast in Marco Tullio Giordana’s upcoming film, Due Soldati (Two Soldiers).
Sara Serraiocco in Salvo
Last year’s Berlinale Shooting Star Sara Serraiocco has been lighting up the screen ever since Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza chose her to play Rita, the blind kidnapping victim in Salvo. Since then she’s been the teenaged synchronized swimmer Jenny in Cloro and more recently the Jehovah’s Witness Giulia in Marco Daniele’s La Ragazza Del Mondo (Worldly Girl). We’ll soon see her in Giovanni Veronesi’s upcoming Non È Un Paese Per Giovani (Not A Country For The Young).
Sara left her family and her hometown of Pescara and arrived in Rome with nothing, but hard work paid off. She’s got a mom, dad, and older sister who is studying to become a doctor. Training as a modern dancer helped her pull off looking like a winning synchronized swimmer, but she’d never done it before making Cloro.
Cloro
Though both Salvo and Cloro have been distributed and well-received in North America Sara seems genuinely surprised to be considered famous. “In America?” she asked. “People know me in America?” (Of course we do. We love you!)
But she adds, “I don’t want to be famous. I just want to make great cinema.”
Never-the-less Sara has been doing both, appearing at premiers all over the world: At Sundance with Cloro, “Sundance is crazy and comfortable, but not glamorous, the Berlin Festival, “A little more glamorous”, and at Cannes with Salvo, “Very, very glamorous.”
Her goals? Sara is determined to improve her English, get rid of her accent, and star in a Martin Scorsese film, but we love her Italian accent in Italian movies just fine.
Sara Serraiocco
I Dolori Del Giovane Edo (Short Skin)
At 18 Matteo Creatini found himself, without much experience and without a single acting class starring in Duccio Chiarini’s definitive coming of age movie, I Dolori Del Giovane Edo (Short Skin), a film about his penis. (Or, rather, his character, Edoardo’s.) Though the camera doesn’t capture it, practically everyone in the film gets a look at it so you have to wonder; was this a little embarrassing?
“No”, says Matteo. “I have to say that I that I didn’t feel at all awkward on the set because Duccio and all his team proved to be very human and the script was delicately written. I understood right away that it wasn’t American Pie and so I could let myself go!”
“The young people’s dialogue is, in my opinion, one of the movie’s strengths”, he says. “Nicola (Nocchi, who plays his friend Arturo) and I made friends quickly and being the same age we got along naturally on the set, we did some long but good work on the script along with Duccio, trying to make the lines real!”
Matteo keeps himself busy these days with his band CreMa, a mix of rap and electronica that he does in a studio at the University of Bologna.
Laura Adriani
At just 22-years-old beautiful Laura Adriani has already had a career to die for with roles in Luca Miniero’s Non C’è Più Religione, Paolo Genovese’s Tutta Colpa di Freud, and Giuseppe Piccioni’s Questi Giorni. Even so, Laura speaks frankly about the difficulty of her profession:
Being an actress in 2017 is not easy, and in Italy it’s even harder. There are so many more people that dream of acting and much less money to invest in films. For actors this means lower salaries and if you try to negotiate, the producer says ‘it’s either that or we’ll find somebody else.”
There are exceptions, like with Giuseppe Piccioni’s film Questi Giorni which we presented at the 2016 Venice Film Festival, but unfortunately, as we say in Italy, ‘Non è sempre domenica! (meaning, life is not always a bowl of cherries).
In Italy we are too afraid of change. We’d rather “riscaldare la minestra del giorno prima” (reheat yesterday’s soup). It would be great if we could make a movie like La La Land someday, and I could have a role like Emma Stone’s. I hope I’m around when things change. I hope to be part of this small but important revolution.”
Questi Giorni
ICFF Junior runs from May 8-13, 2017 at the prestigious TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto, Colossus Theatre in Vaughan, and Cineplex Cinemas in Yorkdale.
To learn more about the ICFF Jr. festival or to book your school please visit www.icff.ca/jr/.
