Cristina Comencini
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CATTLEYA and RAI CINEMA present a production in collaboration with in collaboration with QUANDO LA NOTTE When the night a film by Cristina Comencini starring Claudia Pandolfi and Filippo Timi length: 114’ WORLD SALES PRESS CELLULOID DREAMS RENDEZ‐VOUS 2 rue Turgot Viviana Andriani 75009 Paris ‐ France Aurélie Dard T +33 1 49 70 03 70 Tel. : 01 42 66 36 35 info@celluloid‐dreams.com viviana@rv‐press.com www. celluloid‐dreams.com In Venice : +39 348 331 6681 Download Presskit and stills : www.rv‐press.com CREW DIRECTOR CRISTINA COMENCINI based on the novel QUANDO LA NOTTE by Cristina Comencini SCREENPLAY CRISTINA COMENCINI DORIANA LEONDEFF DIRECTOR ASSISTANT FRANCESCA ROMANA POLIC GRECO CASTING DIRECTOR MIRTA GUARNASCHELLI PRODUCTION DESIGNER GIANCARLO BASILI COSTUMES FRANCESCA LIVIA SARTORI SOUND GILBERTO MARTINELLI EDITING FRANCESCA CALVELLI PRODUCTION MANAGER SANDRA BONACCHI DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY ITALO PETRICCIONE MUSIC ANDREA FARRI LINE PRODUCER MATTEO DE LAURENTIIS EXECUTIVE PRODUCER GINA GARDINI A CATTLEYA PRODUCTION in collaboration with RAI CINEMA with the collaboration of FIP and Lumiq Studios with the support of Film Commission Torino Piemonte PRODUCED BY RICCARDO TOZZI GIOVANNI STABILINI MARCO CHIMENZ INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION CELLULOID DREAMS ITALIAN DISTRIBUTION 01 DISTRIBUTION CAST MARINA CLAUDIA PANDOLFI MANFRED FILIPPO TIMI ALBERT THOMAS TRABACCHI STEFAN DENIS FASOLO BIANCA MICHELA CESCON LUNA MANUELA MANDRACCHIA GUSTAV FRANCO TREVISI SYNOPSIS Marina is a fragile and insecure young woman struggling to be the perfect mother. Hoping a change of scenery will improve her baby’s sleeping habits, she decides to spend the summer vacation in the mountainside. Marina rents an apartment from Manfred, a gruff mountain guide who lives in an old house. He is distrustful of women. Manfred and Marina keep their distance until a harrowing event forces them together. Faced with an undeniable and growing attraction, they shy away from their desire. Fifteen years later Marina returns to the mountain to find Manfred. INTERVIEW WITH CRISTINA COMENCINI The film “Quando la Notte” has been my hardest film. It was shot in the mountains at high altitudes. Between one thing and another we were on location for almost 7 months, working in extreme weather conditions in places that could only be reached on foot or by helicopter. It was very tough, particularly in winter. We would spend 8 or 9 hours in the freezing cold (on Mount Moro, where the film was shot, temperatures dropped to ‐17° C!) without any shelter and scarcely any room to move around in. As is often the case in filmmaking, once a location was reached and set up we had to simply wait for the right moment to shoot. I think this incredibly strong, almost violent interaction with nature was somehow transposed to the film and gives it a certain power that goes beyond the actual story. Macugnaga No film had ever been shot in Macugnaga before. Monte Rosa is an incredibly beautiful mountain which towers over the village and interacts with it. We received precious help from local mountain guides, in particular from Gianni Tagliaferro who was with us for the entire duration of the project. He accompanied us on location scouting and helped Filippo Timi understand his role as mountain guide, sharing with him the secrets of hiking. He also taught us how to avoid falling, particularly in one very complex scene in which Claudia had to run along a tight ridge and the cameraman and steadicam operator had to take turns to move forward or backward since there was only room for one person at a time. His assistance was invaluable, as was that of the cable‐car operators who ended up playing themselves in the film. We even used the people of the village, with their accents and local dialect, for the party scene. There was a great deal of interaction between the location and the film, and the end result is a testimony to this. The locations The extraordinarily beautiful locations, chosen together with production designer Giancarlo Basili, were extremely difficult to get to. We used helicopters, jeeps, cable cars and chair lifts… Filming in exceptional places like these is what induces progress in film technology: you are continuously put to the test. It was an amazing experience for all of us, despite days of exhaustion and discouragement, days in which we craved an evening out or a movie with friends, or those early mornings in which it seemed impossible to get up in the dark, blistering cold. But this is all part of filmmaking. The actors ended up assimilating the village and the mountains, as if the harsh emotions of the film had found the ideal place to be interpreted. The children The role of Marco was played by a set of two‐year old triplets: Gianluca, Vincenzo and Leonardo took turns on the set. At that age it is almost impossible to direct children, they do what they want and you have to resort to tricks. They had very different personalities: one was more adventurous, the other more prone to tears whereas the third had a calmer temperament. My father often used children in his films, although generally older than ours, and I learned from him that one must be as discrete as possible, constantly finding ways of hiding the camera. We created walls with fabric so that they couldn’t see us. But as time passed, we realised they got used to our presence and lost their awe of the camera. At one point one of them even called Claudia “Mommy”. The story When I’m writing a book I never think that it may become a film, it is just a book. One of the aspects that most worried me about transposing “Quando la Notte” onto film was the way in which I had used introspective monologues in the book. It is the story of a man and a woman who do not know each other and, to gain understanding of one another, they listen and think. This is clearly not possible to portray on film. Paradoxically, Doriana Leondeff and I created this introspection in a completely objective manner. We used what movies are best at: the power of silence, fleeting glances and slow, reciprocal looks of desire. Another aspect which we were able to portray more powerfully is the mountainous landscape, the mightiness of the rocks, the cold and the ice. The emotions “Quando la Notte” is about the profound differences between men and women bound by a child. Manfred was abandoned by his mother as a young boy and raised in a man’s world by his father and his brothers. He feels deep resentment towards women. Marina is a young woman on holiday with her son and does not have a man who understands her solitude and the ambivalent feelings of love and hostility she feels towards her son. Ironically Manfred turns out to be the only one who truly understands her: the suffering caused from being abandoned by his mother means he doesn’t take maternal love for granted. Relationships, particularly those with people different from oneself, are represented in the film by the two cable‐cars: they come from opposite places and only cross paths for a fleeting moment. I believe it is the very difference between men and women that gives rise to deep contrast, fear and ambivalence, but also to desire and, ultimately, to a possible miraculous understanding. The cast Claudia Pandolfi and Filippo Timi had their first audition together. In fact it was the very first audition for the roles of Marina and Manfred. I could have just stopped and chosen them but, like all directors, I had endless doubts and therefore auditioned a number of other excellent actors and actresses. But Claudia and Filippo were perfect, both because of their age and their personality,. So were the other actors: from Thomas Trabacchi and Denis Fasolo, who play Manfred’s brothers, to Michela Cescon, who plays Bianca, they were all very genuine in their role. I think I put the cast through immense endurance tests, the protagonists in particular. I directed them with very precise indications of actions and movements. Initially they may have felt blocked by my creative aspirations. It is my way of working both with actors and the camera. I don’t really believe in spontaneity, whether in filmmaking or in creative expression in general. The crew One of the most important roles of a director is to get people involved and to ensure that everyone gives their best: everyone must know what the film is about and contribute to it. The crew was fantastic. I had huge help from the entire lighting and camera departments, both from cameraman Fabrizio Vicari (a constant presence, who understood the film perfectly and proved to be very agile) and clearly also from Italo Petriccione. Italo is an excellent director of photography. The film is full of atmospheric imagery, spectacular rocks shimmering in the sun, piercing indoor shots and nights lit up by the mountains. We worked hard on the dual facets of the film: summer and winter, past and present, light and dark. From a technical point of view we used telephoto lenses for summer shots and wide‐angle lenses for winter scenes. Also, the first part is shot with a hand‐held camera, albeit a gentle and barely perceptible one. The costumes by Francesca Sartori are authentic, precise, perfectly integrated with the nature and the village and give each character their personality. How much did the weather conditions affect your work? We had two key problems during the shooting: one was “what will the weather be like?” and the other was “will we be able to shoot this scene?”.