Both hailing from Grosseto and both born toward the end of the 1980s, Niccolò Falsetti and Francesco Turbanti had made their directing debuts a few years earlier with a film titled Margini, a story about three punk friends in early-2000s Grosseto. It was the kind of debut that’s easy to call a “happy first film,” albeit with little imagination: presented in the International Critics Week program in 2022, the sole Italian title in the lineup, it won the Audience Award, and later earned two nominations at the David di Donatello and three at the Nastri d’Argento. Now Falsetti and Turbanti have crafted a new movie, produced like their previous effort by the Manetti Bros. and, as before, set in a past not too distant in that province the two filmmakers know so well. The film, titled Dear Cruel World and which had its world premiere at the Rome Film Fest (Freestyle section) and will hit cinemas on October 22 with Fandango, confirms the abilities of these two directors, and only in terms of geography and time does it retreat a bit, moving from Grosseto to the smaller town of Albinia, and telling a story set in 1999. The protagonist is Giovanna (played by the young Aurora Malianni), a twelve-year-old girl who is somewhat unlucky and whose world is upended when Mirko, her closest friend to whom she is bound by a blood pact, disappears without a trace, while the adults are evasive and reticent about what may have happened. Giovanna thus decides to figure out what happened to Mirko on her own, and by her side will stand a handful of unlikely allies. Predominant among them is the perpetually challenged Ludovica, nicknamed the Hammer, and her gang of bullies, unlikely companions with whom Giovanna will forge an improbable friendship; and then there is her father, who is dead, yet with whom Giovanna continuously dialogues in her mind. Falsetti and Turbanti, with Zerocalcare contributing to the visual design, have imagined these impossible dialogues between father and daughter as a Japanese cartoon, with the parent depicted as a kind of unlikely Ken Shiro, while the girl bears the features of a cow.
We spoke about all of this with the two directors and with the film’s young lead.
Caro Mondo Crudele: the Our Video Interview
Dear Cruel World was written by Falsetti and Turbanti together with Giovanna Vicari and Tommaso Renzoni, and in addition to Zerocalcare the film also collaborated on the music with Giancane, who had previously worked with the two directors on Margini.
Below is the official synopsis, trailer and poster of the film that will be in cinemas from October 22.
Albinia, 1999. Giovanna is a twelve-year-old girl who isn’t exactly lucky. She lives with her mother Sabrina, while her father died years ago, but she leans on him in difficult moments, imagining him as the hero of a Japanese cartoon. In that provincial microcosm, held together by solid and unwritten rules, Giovanna has one ally: Mirko, bound to her for life by a blood pact. But when Mirko disappears and the adults’ explanations grow increasingly vague, Giovanna decides: she will find him, cost what it may. At her side will be Ludovica, known as the Hammer, and her gang of bullies, unlikely companions with whom Giovanna will form an improbable friendship and with whom she will confront a truth impossible to imagine.
Comments