Hit satirical sitcom Boris jumps to the big screen
Lousy neurotic actresses, an Oscar winner who loses his statuette in a poker game, screenwriters who don’t know how to conjugate verbs, the head of an important broadcaster who is “demoted” to working in film as a civic death. With the cry that "After cinema comes radio, after radio comes death,” the ragtag crew of the Italian sitcom Boris takes the plunge to the big screen, in fiction as in real life. And, with rare daring, take aim at the Italian film industry, holding nothing back.
To be released April 1 on 300 screens by 01 Distribution, the highly anticipated Boris: The Film [+see also:
trailer
film profile] is based on the hit television series that ran three seasons on Sky, and which ruthlessly lampooned the ugly, slipshod world of fiction TV.
Written and directed by "golden boys" Mattia Torre, Giacomo Ciarrapico and Luca Vendruscolo, the witty makers of the series, Boris: The Film starts with an explosion of pride on the part of TV director René Ferretti (Francesco Pannofino, the Italian dubber of George Clooney), who on the set of a television film about the young [Joseph] Ratzinger refuses to shoot a scene in which the future Pope, upon hearing about the discovery of a polio vaccine, runs happily through a Bavarian field, in slow-motion.
After walking away from the set, Ferretti receives an unexpected offer to shoot a political film, "à la Gomorrah", for the cinema. But in the most television-oriented country in the world, as well as the home of the “great comedies”, the serious project comes up against the most prosaic demands of the market. And the presumed grandeur of cinema turns out to be a bluff.
Produced by Wildside in collaboration with RAI Cinema and Sky, Boris: The Film features the entire TV cast, including Caterina Guzzanti (the somewhat dry assistant director), Carolina Crescentini (the “lousy actress”) and Pietro Sermonti (the hot-headed, arrogant and decidedly mediocre star of the series within the series). The same tones and themes of the sitcom, so fans will feel right at home.
"We didn’t want to use already known jokes", say the filmmakers, "that would’ve been too easy. We wanted to make sure that those who haven’t seen the series don’t feel left out.” But they’ve created others, and in doing so prove wrong the steadfast rule of TV, summed up by one of the film’s best lines: "TV is like the mafia. No one comes out alive".
(Translated from Italian)
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