15/07/2011

Shooting started yesterday in Cologne on The Future, a four-way co-production between Mario Mazzarotto’s Italian company Movimento Film, Bruno Bettati’s Chilean outfit Jirafa, Germany’s Pandora Film represented by Christoph Friedel and Luis Ángel Ramírez’s Spanish company Astronauta. The film is based on Roberto Bolaño last novel, "Una Novelita Lumpen", written during the Chilean author’s stay in Rome and set in the Italian capital.

The film will be helmed by Chilean filmmaker Alicia Scherson (Best Debut Director at Tribeca and Karlovy Vary in 2005 with Play) and will star Nicolas Vaporidis (The Night Before the Exams [+see also:
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film profile], Men Vs. Women [+see also:
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trailer
making of
film profile]), Chilean actress Manuela Martelli and young Luigi Ciardo (Martino’s Summer [+see also:
trailer
making of
film profile]), here making his international debut. Meanwhile, talks are at an advanced stage with a major international star who will play Maciste, one of the film’s protagonists.

The Future centres on two young teenage brothers from Chile who live in exile in Rome with their parents. Left orphaned after a car accident, the two boys start to lead a life of crime and prostitution.

Scherson commented: "The film is narrated by a woman who remembers her own adolescence. We’ve kept the novel’s Roman setting but we’ve added the Cinecittà neighbourhood where our characters live".

In the development phase, the film had backing from the European Union’s MEDIA Programme, the Roma Lazio Film Commission and Capital Regions for Cinema. The co-production was set up at the Berlinale Co-Production Market 2010 during which Mario Mazzarotto’s Movimento Film came on board. Shooting will continue in Rome at the start of August.

(Translated from Italian)