Placido’s Vallanzasca to screen out of competition
Michele Placido’s Vallanzasca will screen out of competition at the 2010 Venice Film Festival. The actor-director made the announcement at a 12-minute preview of the film in Lipari, at a 20th Century Fox convention.
The film, which like Placido’s Romanzo Criminale [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michele Placido
film profile] is set in the 1970s and looks at the criminal deeds of a group of young people, already has created some buzz and is sure to spark some controversy on the Lido. The association of relatives of the civilian victims protested against the Ministry of Culture giving any funding to a film that would have created a romantic image of convicted murderer and thief Renato Vallanzasca, sentenced to four life sentences.
"My film in now way justifies or hides the terrible crimes he committed, it does not try to replace the trials and mitigate the sentences. It tries to depict with objectivity a mistaken and violent life. It is an x-ray of a criminal mind", says Placido.
The film is inspired by Carlo Bonini’s book The Flower of Evil, a first-person account by Vallanzasca, who also collaborated on the movie. Kim Rossi Stuart, who plays the main character, met with Vallanzasca numerous times to study his personality.
Refused by RAI and Mediaset (while co-producer Elide Melli of Cosmo asked for state financing in vain), the project was picked up by Fox, which after some minority participations in Italian films, boarded the €7m production, as did France’s Babe Films. Fox Italia President Osvaldo De Santis has called it "the jewel of our slate".
Besides Rossi Stuart (Romanzo Criminale), the European cast includes Francesco Scianna, Filippo Timi, Valerio Solarino, Spanish actress Paz Vega (Sex and Lucía [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) and Germany’s Moritz Bleibtreu (The Baader Meinhof Complex [+see also:
trailer
film profile]).
Fox will distribute Vallanzasca in Italy (over Christmas) and Germany, while international sales are handled by Fortissimo Films, which acquired the film at Cannes earlier this year.
(Translated from Italian)
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