An interview with Daniele Lucchetti, an honest director and a great observer of people

The NICE Film Festival is taking place in San Francisco and L’Italo-Americano has had the great pleasure to interview one of the best and clever Italian directors, Daniele Luchetti. He is the most important guest at the NICE this year and the audience could enjoy the view of three of his famous and successful films. The director has been helpful giving a rich and honest interview. I hope you will enjoy it.

Since your debut with "It’s happening Tomorrow " and "Il Portaborse”, you have proved to have great skills in photographing reality. ‘To photograph’, not ‘to interpret’, and this is probably the difference among you and many other Italian directors. Which are the reasons which lead you to telling real life, ideological and social issues?

First of all I think I am an observer of people. I am not interested in ideological stories but rather in the human dynamics, contextualized in a certain period of political history.
The cinema of the 70’s was very ideological, and I was an ideological director. We were convinced that cinema could change the world, but today the cinema and in particular my movies, express the desire to be detached from the events because we live in a de-ideological world. There are no ideological messages in my films.

Where did you take the idea for the film "My Brother is an Only Child", based on Pennacchi’s book "The fascio-comunista"?

I read the book of Pennacchi, and his autobiographical expe- rience was very interesting, so I decided to make a movie of it. Gradually I detached my movie from the book, indeed I was adding something completely new, as the relationship between the two brothers and their relationship with the girl. A very contradictory relationship: two young men who lived in a historical period in which people were forced to line up with a political party, not to take advantages but to survive.

"My Brother is an Only Child" has been an important test for Elio Germano, who plays Accio, and his talent has been confirmed in "Our life". How did you choose him and how did you direct your actors?

I chose Elio because he was the opposite of the character in the novel, a strong and blunt man. Elio is a perfect actor, perhaps the best young Italian actor nowadays (he won the Palme d'Or in ex-aequo with Javier Bardem for the movie "Our Life", ed.) He is an actor who needs to be recorded from the first reharsal, because in that time he is able to give his best. Generally speaking this is the way I prefer to work: I always ask the actors to try the first time on the set, and I follow them with the camera, as if I am invisible, so they have the impression of being free, but free to do what I say! All my films are made of improvisation and order at the same time.

In "Our life", the theme of social precariousness and workers’ conditions, in a sense recalls the outskirts of Rome, that were often depicted by Pasolini, still archaic and borgate. How did you conceive this movie?

I recently finished a documentary about the Italian working class, following their daily routine and I thought it was almost necessary to direct a film about them. They are men who don’t have great ideas, but only one ambition: making money. They do not believe in the State, their only ideology is the money and the only social structure they believe in is family. The film is set in Rome, in the suburbs, where you will not see millenary monuments, and where the most social problems exist.

Problems such as immigration? What is your point of view about this issue?

My point of view is what you see in the film. In Italy the phenomenon of immigration from eastern Europe is more and more incumbent, and the Romanian character of the movie is a representation of this. Italians feels threatened, but at the same time, being tolerant people, they can live with them, in spite of political forces’ manipulation which tries to instill terror.

We live in a period in which our country does not have the strength and the tools to grow from the economic, social and cultural points of view. Cinema, which is the mirror of society, seems to witness this situation. NICE is an important chance because it can lead the Italian cinema beyond its borders. Why has the Italian cinema so many difficulties in spreading internationally? Which are the main differences you found in comparison with the past?

Honestly I do not find big differences, but the poor quality of contemporary films and film-makers. I cannot hide behind the excuse of poor Distribution, it is obvious that nowadays there are more difficulties than before, but there are also fewer original Italian movies.

Valentina Calabrese
Contributor