Speaking to Business Doc Europe ahead of the May 20 Cannes Docs Italy Showcase, Doc/it’s Gianluca De Angelis stressed how the four projects this year are all characterised by “a strong international appeal” for both “festivals and theatres” and are “ready to meet the expectations of the market.” Great importance is placed “on the project’s writing and the director’s vision,” with those “fitting TV formats being excluded.”
The first project in line is Marco Bergonzi and Michael Petrolini’s debut Honeydew, a co-production with Sweden and spearheaded by Simone Catania and Francesca Portalupi of Turin-based Indyca. The project is budgeted at €493,866, with 83% of it already in place.
The feature zooms in on 60-year-old Maureen, who moved to the tiny Northern California enclave of the title in her 20s. However, her simple life of writing country songs and illegally cultivating weed is disrupted due to the legalization of marijuana. Unable to adapt to government bureaucracy she has no choice but to surrender her corner of paradise to a younger generation.
For the producers, Honeydew promises to “summarise the encounter and the fight between a young and an old generation,” aiming “to tell the story of a different world based on the purest sense of freedom.” The project is shot in English, and will target audiences interested in exploring “philosophical and existential themes.” The producers were particularly impressed by the directors’ will power, which allowed them to tug into the Honeydew’s community heartstrings over the course of 12 years. The creative team is currently looking for festivals, distributors, buyers and gap financiers.
Coming up next is Matteo Russo’s Lux Santa, budgeted at €110,000 (with 70% already in place) and produced by Orazio Guarino of Naffintusi Cinema. Set in the Southern Italian town of Crotone, it follows the young people of the Fondo Gesù district dealing with the absence of their fathers. Forced to be husbands for their mothers, every year among the grey buildings, they gather to honour the age-old tradition of the Santa Lucia fire, trying to rediscover their lost adolescence.
“The urgency of producing this film is based on the fact that Santa Lucia fire’s tradition is slowly disappearing. We felt we had to work on this as soon as possible, and having Matteo Russo on site granted us privileged access to the lives of the Fondo Gesù district and, more importantly, to the troubled existences of these kids,” Guarino tells BDE.
Speaking about the project’s potential and the choice of entrusting its direction to Matteo Russo, Guarino says: “It’s a local story but also a very universal one, since our protagonists resemble – for example – the kids living in any French banlieue or in Brooklyn’s outskirts. I’m convinced it will be very well received in Italian theatres, and internationally. Matteo [Russo]’s style is young, fresh, timely and in line with what we now see in the international festival circuit.”
“Besides, he has carried much research work and he’s been in touch with the kids involved in the film for a couple of years. Nobody would tell this story better than him.” The team is looking for festivals, sales agent, distributors and co-producers.
Coming up next is a project titled Terra Incognita and helmed by Enrico Masi. The picture (budgeted at €650,000 with 80% already in place) is being co-produced by Stefano Migliore of Italy’s Caucaso and Loïs Rocque of France’s Les Alchimistes.
In it, weaponisation of energy and nuclear family life in the wilderness intertwine. The creative team present it as “an ode to the search for survival resources on planet earth.” Starting from Alexander von Humboldt’s oeuvre Cosmos, made of sketches describing the natural universe, the film promises to be “a poetic post-human investigation, in and out of atomic energy, in the modern geopolitical context.”
“We kicked off this project in 2018, while finalising our previous effort Shelter – Farewell to Eden,” explains Masi. From that moment on, the world has changed or, better, it sped up. We live in a very uncertain time for all mankind and our relationship with the environment became uncertain too. The effects of such confusion are the result of the last century’s race towards progress. Today this race is revealing itself as lethal. But can art take charge of this narrative?”
“We aim to contribute to a process of sensitisation that is profound and unpredictable through the making of a documentary that speaks about our planet and its health, starting from Europe’s central point of view, our very own ‘observatory,’” Masi adds.
Among the key aesthetic features, Masi highlights the cinemascope, 16 mm cinematography and the immersive score, courtesy of Fabrizio Puglisi in collaboration with Margareth Kammerer and singer/songwriter Iosonouncane.
Migliore and Masi are working together on a film project for the fifth time. He particularly praised the director’s aesthetics, made up of stylistic “contaminations” coming to life “through different forms which the creative documentary format allows to utilise.” The production team is on the lookout for festivals, theatrical distributors, buyers and gap financiers.
The last project of the showcase is Martina Moor’s Touché, an Italian-Belgian co-production led by Nanof’s Filippo Macelloni, currently looking for festivals and buyers.
In it, Italian-Brazilian Olympic fencing champion Nathalie Moellhausen is filmed intimately over 10 years. It zooms in on her challenges, defeats (many) and victories (few). Nathalie’s life is filled by a legendary trainer, a number of dubious mentors, a famous chef as a boyfriend, and a distressing relationship with a cumbersome father.
“The picture is not just an extraordinary sports tale, but also the portrait of a contemporary woman careful about her image, active on social media, obsessed with her appearance and thus appealing to a vast international audience,” producer Macelloni tells BDE.
“A number of distributors such as TV networks, platforms and festivals – and in particular those looking for Olympics-related stories – may be potentially interested. It’s an international production, and the story unfolds in Paris, Rio, Milan, Cuba, London and other locations. The film features different languages and aims to a global audience,” he adds.
Director Moor has been following Nathalie’s endeavours since 2011. After seeing a 60-minute rough cut, Macelloni was impressed by her footage and fascinated by Nathalie’s obsession for victory, by her search for both traditional or extravagant ways of ‘self-help’ (including shamans and witch doctors) and by her turbulent relationship with her father, who died just before of the World Championship won by Nathalie.
