06/11/2012 - After premiering in Toronto, Sergio Castellitto’s new film set in a besieged Sarajevo will be coming out in Italy on November 8. The Spanish Italian production stars Penélope Cruz and Emile Hirsch

"The most absurd love stories are often the best", we are told in Twice Born [+see also:
trailer
interview: Sergio Castellitto
film profile], Sergio Castellitto’s latest film with Penélope Cruz and Emile Hirsch. Gemma and Diego’s story is certainly absurd. From war devastation to internal conflicts, the melodramatic, but never pathetic, plot makes the 132 minutes of film believable to the very end.

Celebrated in Toronto, where it enjoyed its worldwide premiere last September, the film is a fourth feature length film for the Roman actor turned director and the second based on a novel by his wife Margaret Mazzantini (after Don’t Move, also with Penélope Cruz). It is an ambitious film with archetypal human themes including love, death, friendship, motherhood, war and demolition.

Gemma and Diego meet in Sarajevo just before the beginning of the war. She is an Italian student and he an eccentric photographer. They instantly fall in love and spend the night together. Gemma becomes pregnant. Her child will never be born and the desire to be a mother will become an obsession for her.

After settling in Italy, the couple returns to a Sarajevo under siege, where they find a second family: the irreverent Bosnian poet Gojko and beautiful rebellious Muslim girl Aska. Aska offers to be a surrogate mother for Gemma and Diego. As bombs fall, Gemma will escape from Sarajevo with her desperately longed for baby. Diego, the love of her life, stays behind.

The story is constructed through flashback sequences, where every scene is essential. Gemma is now a middle-aged woman with a twenty-year-old son (played by Pietro Castellitto). She returns to Sarajevo with him for an exhibition on the siege’s victims. She considers telling her son the truth, but ends up being assailed by other, unimaginable truths and staying silent.

"My role is not really politically correct", Penélope Cruz admitted during the film’s presentation in Rome. "Gemma is complex and sometimes destructive. But you don’t need to like your character, you just need to understand it. And she has a quality of suffering, she is struggling to survive.”

This struggle affects all characters in the film. Bosnian actor Adnan Haskovich, who plays Gojko, described the film as " one of the best ones on Bosnia, because it doesn’t just talk about victims, it talks about people who are fighting to survive, to have a child.” And "Gemma’s son is a marvelous survivor,” Castellitto pointed out.

Twice Born is a Spanish Italian coproduction, which will be coming out in Italian theatres on 8 November in 350 copies, distributed by Medusa. It will be coming out in Spain on 18 January 2013. The film has already been sold in over twenty countries, including the United States.

(Translated from Italian)