Cristoforo, a bus driver with great physical strength but with a mental retardation, lives an ordinary and squalid life on the border between Italy and France, until an encounter with an African albino girl forces him to defy his friends and the law to save her life.

Bove adopts archetypal themes to reintroduce them through the language of a contemporary dark fairy tale.

The director delves further into a process already begun in his first film, Il Muto di Gallura, of portraying a new anti-hero shaped by marginalization and violence in the broadest sense.  Landscape and nature, together with imploding suffering, that is unleashed in all its strength, take a form of redemption here that was not found in the bandit of Gallura. Moving away from the superstition of looking for a hint of truth in the sacred, Fresi’s language develops in a more contemporary direction. It is powerful, however, in its epic nature which he had demonstrated with his first film.

The story is, once again, a personal and modern interpretation of a genre that can be described as noir or updated western, somewhat in the vein of Taylor Sheridan. Yet all the aspects of the places where the story takes place remain intact and avoid trivializing imitations of the North American world. 

Citing Fabrizio De Andrè one could say, “We also have a few unassuming assassins here in this country.” In addition to the seasoned writer Carlo Orlando, the important novelist, Davide Longo, worked on in the script as well. 

The screenplay that we aim to develop will maintain the literary quality of some themes addressed in the story by bringing it into an earthly and visually tactile reality, where the dramatic action will guide the narrative intentions of every character.

Furthermore, the collaboration with Longo and Orlando makes the text captivating and surprising, also thanks to the deliberate twists that take place at the right moments, proving to be unexpected.

The narrative editing is not formulaic either and lets the two souls of this story meet thanks to an interior, useful leap in time. This helps to introduce the leading character and allows him to evolve enough before coming into contact with a little girl who will change his fate and that of the story.

Director
Story
Matteo Fresi, Davide Longo, Carlo Orlando
Screenplay
Production
con il sostegno di Film Commission Torino Piemonte - Piemonte Film Tv Development Fund - luglio 2024
Last update: 29 October 2024