11/04/2017 - We met with Paolo Del Brocco, the managing director of the production arm of Italy's RAI, to talk about its new editorial line. “The future lies in the mixing of genres”

Dogman by Matteo Garrone and Il Traditore by Marco Bellocchio (news), Sicilian Ghost Story by Piazza & Grassadonia and Martin Eden by Pietro Marcello, the sequel to The Invisible Boy by Gabriele Salvatores (news) and Ammore e Malavita by the Manetti Bros (news), along with the highly anticipated The Leisure Seeker by Paolo Virzì starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland (news). The best of Italian film for a new editorial programme divided into seven different production lines that RAI Cinema has presented for the upcoming film season. Cineuropa sat down to talk about it with the managing director of the production company managed by the state television body, Paolo Del Brocco.

Cineuropa: The new line points to innovation.
Paolo Del Brocco: The institutional mandate handed to us by RAI is to innovate our films with new lines of narrative. Putting the stories at the centre of everything. So we asked writers, including some of the most well established – like Bellocchio, Amelio, Salvatores, Virzì – to write innovative screenplays, without of course compromising on their individual styles. It will probably take years to introduce these new pieces, and this may show in box office takings, but it’s a risk we must take as it is our duty to make sure these films are made, regardless of their commercial success.

Moreover, there are a number of changes underway in the audiovisual industry.
RAI Cinema realised it needed to modernise its cinematographic approach a couple of years ago, and embracing what is new by expressing the need for a change in production from comedies and arthouse films. We are focusing a lot of our energy on more innovative and experimental productions from the point of view of the style, the stories themselves, and the narrative, in an attempt to turn around a style of filmmaking that in recent years, has shown signs of weakness. In these times of complexity and competition, with the proliferation of other forms of audiovisual content, we need to diversify and innovate even more in the name of quality, trying alternative options and new lines that cross the boundaries of genre.

So it’s about blending genres to create something new. In various lines of production.
That’s the direction that RAI Cinema is moving in. The future of Italian film lies in the mixing of genres, so that we can offer a different type of story. Along with a more innovative research line, RAI Cinema is offering a variety of lots of new productions that we’ve organised in distinct groups.

The line we refer to as “Our past” includes films like La tenerezza by Gianni Amelio, Dogman by Matteo Garrone, based on the heinous crimes of "il Canaro" of the Banda della Magliana crime group in Rome, Una questione privata by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani starring Luca Marinelli as partisan Beppe Fenoglio, Bellocchio’s latest film, Il Traditore, on the great mafia informant Buscetta, Pupi Avati, who with Il Signor Diavolo ticks the horror genre box, Mario Martone’s latest film Capri-Batterie, and Daniele Luchetti’s film Io sono tempesta, based on Silvio Berlusconi.

The “Cinema of the future” line includes arthouse films, first works and works by more well-established filmmakers, such as Lazzaro felice by Alice Rohrwacher, Cuori Puri by Roberto De Paolis, Look Up by Fulvio Risuleo, and Una famiglia di Sebastiano Riso starring Micaela Ramazzotti.

The “Coming of Age" line will include the sequel to The Invisible Boy by Salvatores,Children of the Night [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Andrea De Sica
film profile] by Andrea De Sica and Otzi e il mistero del tempo by Gabriele Pignotta.

The most innovative line is “Italian Pop”, which features the Manetti Bros’ musical Ammore e Malavita, Cosimo Gomez’ debut fantasy feature Brutti e cattivi, Il primo re by Matteo Rovere, on the legend of Romulus and Remus, A Casa by Antonio Albanese, who also stars in the film, Il mio corpo vi seppellirà by Giovanni La Parola, and surreal fantasy Addio fottuti musi verdi by Francesco Ebbasta.

The “Cinema without borders” line meanwhile features out writers in international co-productions: as well as the new Virzì film, this production line includes The Whale by Andrea Pallaoro starring Charlotte Rampling, Nico, 1988 by Susanna Nicchiarelli, and Il libro delle visioni by Carlo S. Hintermann.

Last but not least, “Cinema of the real” is the documentary and fictional line, and includes the latest film by Roberto Minervini, Nobody in This World Is Better Than Us, Buon Inverno by Giovanni Totaro, and La strada dei Samouni by Stefano Savona.

(Translated from Italian)