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Daniele Luchetti • Director

"I depict the new working class without prejudice"

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Daniele Luchetti’s Our Life [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
film profile
]
, in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, is being released tomorrow on 280 screens by 01 Distribution. It tells the story of a young construction worker who loses his wife and sets out on an unscrupulous race to get rich. The most Morettian of Italian directors after Nanni Moretti quotes a letter from Anton Chekov: "The artist should never take on political positions, only make the right associations in a story". Read: He doesn’t want to criticize Italian society but "depict it, suspending all judgment".

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Cineuropa: This is not a political film, but the references to the illegal world are evident
Initially, we wanted to show the political passions of the protagonist, who he votes for. But the film would have been weaker if we’d spoken about that directly. It’s a political film a posteriori, because work, mourning and money are clashing themes but actually they all point in the same direction. After the period I described in my previous film, My Brother Is an Only Child [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Daniele Luchetti
interview: Riccardo Tozzi
film profile
]
, the 1960s and 70s, after the ideologies fell, Italy felt orphaned by a model of happiness. The only model still left is making money at all cost. The film depicts this.

The protagonist belongs to a social class that is not often seen in current Italian cinema.
It seems cinematically new but is often used to comic or political effect, to describe the working class like poor victims. But if you look at them without prejudice, they have the same frame of mind as anyone else. They are self-mocking and clear-headed in speaking about and describing themselves, in a decidedly surprising way. They don’t play the victim, they are disenchanted and full of life.

The protagonist elaborates his mourning entirely through his work.
It is the film’s most delicate junction, his wife’s death and work were two difficult things to connect, the turning point was this man’s derailment, which is the film’s most bizarre element and, we hope, it’s strength as well. He denies his wife’s death and everything he does, he does for her.

The role of the two Romanian characters is important in the film.
Marius is not a professional actor and I was struck by his enormous intelligence and acumen: he plays psychoanalyst with the protagonist, when he tells the main character "wake up, your wife is dead". Alina Madalina Berzunteanu is a great talent and was able to act in a foreign language with great ease and creativity.

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