«I even dreamed about this film at night, in my fantasy I had the story of a toxic, dysfunctional family, with two very fragile and good children, I knew exactly what path to take the victims and executioners, between the two good souls and their parents, the obsessive mother, disturbed, morbid with the male, the mythomaniac father who exploits his daughter’s work for a miserable career. And I also thought about the emancipation that I would have done to them, to my Desiré. And then I managed to make the film.” says Micaela Ramazzotti who debuts as a director at Orizzonti Extra with «Felicità».
The film, shot between the Rome of the radical chic left of Piazza Vittorio and the dormitory buildings on the outskirts of Fiumicino (“I know them well, I was born there”, she says), with a perfect cast that compares Professor Sergio Rubini much older than Desiré-Ramazzotti, who by profession is an assistant hairdresser on the set and whom he would like to “educate”, therefore “change”, and her family, the Mazzonis, her father Max Tortora, a showman on private TV, the mother Anna Galiena, a housewife and her son Claudio (Matteo Olivetti) with mental health problems also due to the sedated and sad life they force him to lead. The driving force is Desiré who is ashamed of her parents and yet helps them, who helps her brother, who damns herself at the cost of everything and in the end manages to cure all this fragility and save him.
Written with two debutants, Isabella Cecchi and Alessandra Guidi, lit by Luca Bigazzi, produced by Lotus dei Leone with Rai Cinema, in theaters with 01 from 21 September, «Felicità» it will not remain a single experience. «My job is to be an actress, but making films from your ideas, carrying out inspections, choosing the actors, writing stories is something I want to continue doing – Ramazzotti tells Ansa – and in fact every day I write things about one of my notebook and with the screenwriters we are already jotting down other ideas, as long as the public wants it.”
Ramazzotti, who recently starred in «The Good Mothers», a series awarded at the Berlinale, adds: «I managed to do the directing with nerve, determination, the desire to get involved. I am grateful to the cinema and the directors who chose me, I was able to create formidable female characters who then brought everyone into Happiness, but this is also a job of challenges and if you want to do the opportunities you will find them, especially in this moment historical”.
Micaela, born in 1979, has always interpreted dramatic, problematic, melodramatic and touching roles with sensitivity, from «All Life Ahead», «The First Beautiful Thing», «La Pazza Gioia» by Paolo Virzì but also «Standing Room in Paradise » by Carlo Verdone, «Tenderness» by Gianni Amelio. «I have a weakness for fragile people, for weaknesses, for mental distress, for people born crooked and defective, those who when they get up in the morning have midges in their heads and who need help», says Ramazzotti, dodging references personal, «and yet while embracing all this I also wanted a character who tries to emancipate himself, who fights to be happy, who has the courage to escape».