03/03/2015 - La nostra quarantena considers the uncertain future for young Italian people, starting with a true story that will soon hit cinemas via Cinecittà Luce

Following the documentary Tutte le storie di Piera [+see also:
trailer
film profile] about the life and career of actress Piera Degli Esposti (Maria Adriana Prolo Award at the 31st Turin Film Festival, 2014 Special Silver Ribbon), Peter Marcias returns to fiction, albeit still anchored in reality, with La nostra quarantena [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. Produced by Capetown by Camillo Esposito, in collaboration with the Anna Ruggiu Foundation and with the support of the Fondazione Sardegna Film Commission, the movie will soon be released in cinemas with Cinecittà Luce. 

The screenplay, written by the director together with Gianni Loy, centres on a university professor, Maria, who teaches in Rome and a student, Salvatore, who is invited to Cagliari to report on a group of fifteen Moroccan sailors blocked in the port of Cagliari who are on strike because they haven't been paid for nine months. “We started with a true story”, says Marcias, “the story of the Kenza ship that was seized for months. This event is the basis for the development of the movie's central theme that turns the focus to the main character and becomes in part a reflection on the situation of young jobless Italians with an uncertain future”.

The protagonist of the movie, as Maria, is Francesca Neri, one of the most renowned Italian actors and abroad, particularly in Spain, where she worked with Bigas Luna, Carlos Saura and Pedro Almodóvar. The male protagonist, as the student Salvatore, is the young Moisè Curia: “I really enjoyed him in the popular Rai fiction Braccialetti rossi”, states Marcias, “he's a young actor who is coming from a theatre background, he's very conscientious and receptive. The Taviani Brothers have also selected him for their new movie”.

La nostra quarantena was filmed between Rome and Cagliari: “The film in fact narrates the story of an encounter”, emphasizes the Sardinian director, “on the one hand we have in Cagliari a container ship with fifteen Moroccans on board in a state of unrest because they haven't been paid. On the other, a young university student who, leaving Rome embarks on an inner journey also, in search of what will become of him in this modern day Italy”. 

“So the isolation doesn't just refer to the Moroccan sailors”, concludes Marcias, “but metaphorically it also refers to the young people, in a stalemate without even a glimmer of hope for the future. It's not a pessimistic film. It's an invitation to consider the confusion in which we live".

(Translated from Italian)