email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

BIOGRAFILM 2018

Tea Falco • Director

"I wanted to show people Sicily’s best side”

by 

- Actress Tea Falco makes her directorial debut with This is Not a Cannolo, a docufiction in search of the meaning of life, set in Sicily and screened at the Biografilm Festival in Bologna

Tea Falco • Director
(© Biografilm)

Tea Falco –a 31-year-old Catania-born photographer, performer and actress (discovered by Bernardo Bertolucci in Me and You [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
)– embarks on a trip around truly authentic Sicily in search of the meaning of life in her directorial debut. A documentary that blurs the lines between reality fiction, science and God, and which interviews twenty different people (a philosopher, housewife, playboy, unauthorised parking attendant, trans prostitute, Adam and Eve, just to name a few), as part of a sort of surrealist anthropological experiment, going hand-in-hand with its Magritte-style title: This is Not a Cannolo [+see also:
trailer
interview: Tea Falco
film profile
]
. Part of the Eye on Films project, which supports the most representative European film premieres on the international market, the film had its world premiere at the 14th Biografilm Festival in Bologna, and will be broadcast on Sky Arte on 29 June, at the same time as its release in more than ten Italian cities. The Parisian company Wide House is in charge of its international distribution.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Cineuropa: Work, love, immigration, Jesus ... This documentary touches on numerous topics. What was the first question you asked people when you interviewed them?
Tea Falco: I asked them what they thought the meaning of their own life was. Other times I limited myself to simply recording their everyday life, as is the case for the mother and daughter at the beginning of the film, or I let them express their own opinions and points of view, their soul. The writing was fairly freestyle. The film’s neither a pure documentary or a fictional film, it’s both. I really enjoyed going to these peoples’ houses and talking to them.

What was the initial idea that led you to make the film?
I come from a photography background, so my references are reportage photographers like Bresson, Doisneau or Arbus, who photographed ‘freaks.’ I have always been interested in everyday life. By the age of 20, while photographing people on the streets, I thought about doing a project about various human characters. I wanted to describe the many facets of the human soul, and search for the meaning of life through them. In the film I explain things using quantum physics: people say that observers influence reality and that we are all connected, part of a united whole, which makes us immortal in some way: God is us. Adam and Eve, in fictional scenes, fight over the sinful fruit: was it an apple or a pear? By ironically deconstructing the meaning behind the legend of our creation, I was able to ponder what the point of view really was.

How did you select the twenty people you interviewed?
I went in search of people all over Sicily for a year. Even out on the streets. I stopped people with the faces that interested me the most. Some of the people I interviewed are a part of my life: my father, for example, who talks about tomato seeds, the Latin lover from Catania that I've known for 13 years or the theoretical physicist. The common thread that links them all together is that they are people who have lived different, non-conformist lives.

The film also offers the audience a glimpse into non-stereotypical Sicily. Was that also your intention?
I wanted to show people Sicily’s best side, how sincere Sicilians are, especially the older generations. I interviewed very few young people, I know my own generation very well so I wasn’t as interested in interviewing younger people. My main point of reference was Due o tre cose che so di lei by Godard – a documentary and film experiment on Paris while it was heading towards globalisation. In this sense, in my opinion, Sicily has not yet been completely globalised. The whole of the South has such an ancient culture, it’s free from rules, it’s very natural. I realised that for the first time while making this film and digested it, I’d never actually travelled around the whole island like this before.

The film avails itself of illustrious collaborations: Marco Spoletini, Matteo Garrone's trusted editor; Fabio Cianchetti, director of photography for Bertolucci and winner of six David di Donatello awards, Martin Hernandez, Academy Award nominee for sound editing for Birdman. How did you get them involved?
I met Fabio Cianchetti on the set of Me and You, he joined the project immediately, and we both opted for more a cinematographic and documentary photography style. When I sent Marco Spoletini the project, he was impressed by its artistic and cultural value. I met Martin Hernandez at a festival in Mexico, he saw my photographs and liked them. He told me that there are very few really personal projects that you can have faith in. And he had faith in mine.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

(Translated from Italian)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

See also

Privacy Policy