Italiano
La stranezza di Roberto Andò, distributed by Medusa Film, will be released in Italian cinemas on Thursday, October 27th, 2022. The film was presented in the section Grand Public of the 17th Rome Film Fest.
LA STRANEZZA
Director
Roberto Andò
Nations
Italy
Year
2022
Duration
103′
Cast
Toni Servillo
Salvo Ficarra
Valentino Picone
Giulia Andò
Rosario Lisma
Aurora Quattrocchi
Donatella Finocchiaro
Galatea Ranzi
1920. A tribute for Verga’s eightieth birthday becomes the opportunity for Luigi Pirandello’s return to Sicily. But an unexpected circumstance will introduce him to two gravediggers, amateur actors, who exert a singular fascination on him. They are rehearsing a new show with the actors of their company. The encounter with this scruffy amateur company will lead to many a surprise for the author of One, No one and One Hundred Thousand.
COMMENTARY
Where did Pirandello get the idea for “Six Characters in Search of an Author”? Thanks to two gravediggers from Girgenti (which in 1920 was not yet called Agrigento), who forget the work they do by writing and performing irresistible farces with their scruffy company, whom the playwright met in Sicily in 1920. One day, something unexpected disrupted their performance, and Pirandello duly took note. After The Stolen Caravaggio, Andò continues to blend invention and history, fiction and reality, theatre and life. Bringing face to face actors beloved by the spectators but who have never worked together before: Toni Servillo in the role of Pirandello, Ficarra and Picone in those of Onofrio and Sebastiano, at the centre of an exceptional cast.
ROBERTO ANDÒ
Roberto Andò was born in Palermo in 1959. After studying philosophy, he worked at a very young age as an assistant director to Francesco Rosi and Federico Fellini, and later with Michael Cimino and Francis Ford Coppola. Since 1980 he has split his time between theatre and film. He made his debut as a film director in 1995 with Diario senza date. In 2013 he won the David di Donatello for Best Screenplay for Long Live Freedom, which he wrote and directed.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
La stranezza is a fantasy about the creative act, about inspiration. A journey suspended between the real life of the author and imaginative invention. At the centre is the relationship between Pirandello and his characters. Between Pirandello and Sicily, between the private obsessions of a genius and the life of a Sicilian town in the 1920s. Some of the facts told here are true, as are some of the characters that appear. It’s true that in 1920 Pirandello went to Sicily to celebrate Verga’s eightieth birthday. It’s true that as a child he was taken care of by a nurse, Maria Stella, who would tell him the stories and rumours of Girgenti which inspired the author’s work.
