Important collaborations, despite the young age, for Giovanni Tortorici from Palermo, born in 1996, who after having worked as assistant director to fellow citizen Luca Guadagnino, is in Venice with his first work «Diciannove»competing in the Orizzonti section. A story of training, and not only, with focus on Leonardo’s anxietiesa 19-year-old boy, a student away from home, who after his high school diploma wanders between London, Siena and Turin, unsure of the path to follow and torn between conformism and a great passion that little by little will transform into an obsessive neurosis centered on literary studies. The protagonist is the debutant from Palermo Manfredi Marini, chosen through a series of street castings.
In the press conference Tortorici underlined theautobiographical origin of the storybut free from any intent of generational representation. Produced by Guadagnino’s own Frenesy Film Company with Pinball London, the project was born from a series of intimate reflections: «I am a person who tends to self-analyze and thinking about my 19 years I found curious things – said Tortorici – like an atypical lifestyle, a way of living the dimension of a very abstract, alienated student, even out of control with respect to the relationship with myself».
A character, Leonardo, that the author himself defines as “extreme”using psychoanalysis to describe his sublimation mechanism: «He doesn’t understand his own impulses well and tends to divert them towards something else, such as literature and study in general. We can sense at the end of the film that he may have had a dissolute lifestyle, getting drunk through alcohol and substances. His being out of control may have acted to make him become too controlled, also in reference to a rigorous morality, based precisely on self-control».
A typical story of a difficult age, therefore, described with sincerity and a desire to confront one’s dark sides also through the art of cinema. A film in which language has its own function of narrative freedom: «I conceived the story by imagining it visually, trying to make an expressive and imaginative language coincide with the narrative need, because I would never want to be an aesthete, but rather make sure that everything comes from itself through the use of visuality».
Many autobiographical books in the director’s education, and the fortune of being able to count on an enlightened producer like Luca Guadagnino: «He gave an imprint of freedom, according to my vision, making sure that the authorial reasons prevailed over the productive ones». Palermo in the film is also biographical, the location of the story along with London and Siena: «We filmed mainly at my parents’ house, in the Tommaso Natale-Cardillo neighborhood, where I grew up. In the film you can also see the highway to the airport, Mondello beach, Via Notarbartolo, but not the historic center with the classic movida».
Co-produced in association with Memo Films, Ag Studios and Tenderstories, “Diciannove” also stars Vittoria Planeta, Dana Giuliano, Sergio Benvenuto and Luca Lazzareschi. At the moment there is no news on the film’s theatrical release.