01/03/2022 - BERLINALE 2022: The director spoke about his film, which retraces the daring adventure of Pirandello's ashes, through which the history of Italy is told

Paolo Taviani does not hide his emotion, sitting on the sofa of a room on the fifth floor of the Hyatt in Berlin, as he tells us about the genesis of Leonora addio [+see also:
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film profile], the only Italian title in competition this year at the Berlinale, the first film without his brother Vittorio, who passed away in 2018. "My brother and I have always been intrigued by this tragic funeral of Pirandello. We wanted to make it together years ago. Then it wasn't possible, but during the making of it he was always close to me." The film, in Italian cinemas from 17 February with 01, retraces the incredible adventure of Pirandello's ashes, through the journey of a delegate of the municipality of Agrigento (Fabrizio Ferracane) charged with bringing the urn from Rome to Sicily, up to the troubled burial fifteen years after his death.

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Cineuropa: How did the film come about?
Paolo Taviani: It always seemed to Vittorio and I that it was Pirandello himself who wrote his funeral in a grotesque way. Intrigued by this story, we already wanted to include it in Kaos, our 1984 film based on the playwright's short stories. When we suggested making this story too, the producer at the time, Giuliani G De Negri, told us, albeit with affection and admiration, that he had run out of money.

When did you decide to take it up again?
Two years ago, when a lot of people had already talked about Pirandello's ashes. I jumped into this project with Vittorio's breath near me, and it’s still there today. I documented real moments of that story and invented the outline, including what happens on the train. I immersed myself in Pirandello's truths, in my own, and in fantasy.

This is not the first time you have worked on Pirandello's texts. Is that also what prompted you to do it?
There can't be logic in everything. While I was doing it I felt pleasure and suffering. I think we are made of the films we have made before. Pirandello inspired Vittorio and me. The great writer used to say: ideas are like sacks, they have to be filled up. And I had two to fill. For me, cinema is a rare beast that continues to surprise me even today at my young age.

What attracted you and your brother to this novel?
Especially the surreal statement that the nail was there on purpose to be used by the boy to hit the girl. There is a non-reality behind it that I felt corresponded to the moment we were living. I asked myself: all this evil around us, by whom is it wanted? Is it deliberate, then? I felt that this story written by Pirandello in the past was part of the present, of the pandemic. He had written it twenty days before dying, and I was also very struck by his very sad vision, with such a profound sense of the end. In his other stories, there was always something grotesque, whereas this one is directed towards death. I also wanted to open and close the film with a curtain. Because the tragedy we are witnessing is part of the theatre, something clear, limpid and mysterious.

In Leonora addio, you wanted to tell the story of Italy through the images of Neorealist films, too.
In this film, everything proceeds in fragments of stories and lives, and the war was one of the most terrible periods we have experienced. I’ve always thought that Italian culture had three fundamental moments: the Renaissance, the melodrama and Neorealist cinema, which was such a real event in the history of world culture. So I decided to include some scenes from the repertoire, such as those from Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves. I was moved, I was reminded of my youth, and the reason why I make films, like Visconti and Rossellini.

Exactly ten years ago you won the Golden Bear with Caesar Must Die [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
film profile]. How do you feel about your return to the Berlinale?
Director Carlo Chatrian saw the film when it wasn't ready, without the music [created by Nicola Piovani, editor’s note]. I thought it was bad because it wasn't finished yet, but he liked it a lot. He called me and told me it was a competition film. At first I thought it would be better out of competition, but in the name of the film and the work done, I finally said yes.

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(Translated from Italian)