Two different but high-profile projects for two Sicilian talents at the Venice Film Festival: the Messina-born Joseph DeDomenico and the palermitan Francis Leone.
Already in “Euphoria” and in the series “ZeroZeroZero”, De Domenico plays a pivotal character in “Vermiglio”, the second work by Maura Delpero, the second Italian film in the main competition. The story, set in 1939, the last year of the Second World War, tells the story of a large family from Trentino where a refugee soldier arrives who will cause havoc, at the very moment in which the world finds peace. The actor from Messina plays Pietro Risi, husband of Lucia (Sara Serraiocco). «I bring Sicily and Messina – he tells us -. Pietro is a Sicilian soldier, and because of my accent I was relocated in the script as originally from Galati Marina (Messina). He escapes from the war in Europe, saves his companion in misfortune, Attilio (Santiago Fondevilla Sancet), and brings him back to Vermiglio, his native town. Pietro is a character who, as a refugee, tells of the war, the distance from home, the prejudice and the changes resulting from the war experience: «He finds himself in Trentino hungry, destroyed, worn out, with the dramatic task of telling the war through his dark gaze. Once he settles into this country, life seems to rewind the tape; but he finds himself suspended, vulnerable, balanced between the beauty of the snow-capped peaks and the fear of prejudice». The South not only in Pietro’s speech, but in the folds of the plot, in that “unsaid” that speaks more than the images, and the special bond that will be established between him and Lucia will be fundamental for the decisive turning point of the story: «Sara Serraiocco and I tell the origins, the family from the South, from Messina, who is left because they are forced to flee the war. It is therefore fundamental because, however absent it may seem, it is everything that is not seen that has an enormous weight in the film. There are the “expected roots”, the hope of the son’s return from the war».
A completely different genre for Francesco Leone in “Katabasis”, a dark story with a mysterious atmosphere in which he stars with director Samantha Casella, in her second work after her acclaimed debut with “Santa Guerra”. Yesterday the presentation, with an excerpt from the film, produced by The Shadow Factory, in which the actor from Palermo is Aron, a young orphan, whose guardianship has been entrusted to Jacob (Bruno Bilotta), a cynical manager who has made him a star, building a private life for him on the surface. The man has a secret relationship with Nora (Casella) and the two live in a majestic villa that is the scene of secrets, lies, deceptions, where disturbing events occur, because it seems that Nora is able to communicate with the souls of the afterlife. «He is a very tormented boy – the actor tells us – with a life of abuse behind him, trapped between public and secret life. As an actor, I tried to capture this duality, worked a lot on his vulnerability and this obsession that binds him to Nora. He searches for a sense of belonging and this makes him incredibly human and tragic. “No news yet on the theatrical release.
