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FUNDING Italy

IDM backs Roberto Faenza’s new film on Nobel Prize winner Mario Capecchi

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- Matt Dillon and Alessandro Preziosi are set to star in this film co-produced with Switzerland and shot in the Alto Adige region, while funding has also been confirmed for German and Latvian projects

IDM backs Roberto Faenza’s new film on Nobel Prize winner Mario Capecchi
Actors Matt Dillon and Alessandro Preziosi, who will star in Resilient (provisional title) by Roberto Faenza

The new projects set to receive support from the IDM Südtirol - Alto Adige Film Fund & Commission in this year’s second round of funding for films in the production or pre-production phase hail from Italy, Germany and Latvia.

Standing tall among the four new projects to be supported in the production stage is Resilient (a provisional title), the new film by Roberto Faenza who is returning to the Alto Adige region following his previous work Anita B. [+see also:
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to recount the extraordinary life of Mario Capecchi, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and who spent his childhood on the streets before being reunited with his mother, who had managed to survive imprisonment in the infamous concentration camp, Dachau. Set to star in the cast are Matt Dillon and Alessandro Preziosi, while Jean Vigo and RAI Cinema will be the Italian partners in this co-production with Switzerland (SF Studios, Svensk Filmindustri AB).

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A Latvian western co-produced with Poland has also been earmarked for funding in the production phase; namely Wild East by Matiss Kaza, produced by Fenixfilm in league with Furia Film. Set at the end of the 19th century, the film tells the tale of Eva and her disappearance from a baron’s manor on the day of her (arranged) marriage. Similarly buoyed by Alto Adige funds is German TV series Wild Republic by Markus Goller and Lennart Ruff, produced by Monaco’s Lailaps Pictures together with Telekom Deutschland. The work follows a handful of young criminals enrolled on a tough training programme in a bid to successfully reintegrate into society. Francesco Catarinolo’s documentary The Red House, which was supported last year in the development phase, has also been awarded funds this time round. A co-production between Italy (Tekla di Torino) and Germany (VIDICOM Media in Hamburg), the film revolves around the life of Alto Adige mountaineer Robert Peroni who came into contact with the indigenous Inuit people during a Greenland expedition in 1985.

The three projects benefitting from IDM support in the pre-production phase are all Italian documentaries: After Dive will be directed by Patrizia Emma Scialpi who wrote the film together with Leonardo Guerra Seràgnoli (Last Summer [+see also:
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, Likemeback [+see also:
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film profile
]
), basing it around the intensely athletic training programme embarked upon by Tania Cagnotto and Francesca Dallapè in view of their return to synchronised diving after their official withdrawal in 2016. Produced by Rome-based outfit Nightswim, the documentary looks at the motivations which drive these two Olympic champions to put themselves to the test in such a fashion, considering their already hectic schedule as mothers, not to mention the jobs they hold down and the oscillation of their lives between past and present.

The other two documentaries shored up in the pre-production phase come courtesy of production companies based in Bolzano. La Fain Media is working on Hohe Mauern - Geschichten aus dem Frauenkloster Säben, written and directed by Evi Oberkofler and Edith Eisenstecken. In this instance, the two filmmakers point their camera on the Sabiona monastery, charting the daily lives of the four sisters who live there and who keep the long history of this establishment alive as it continues, as ever to attract millions of tourists. Last but not least, Helios Sustainable Films are producing Souvenirs of War, written and directed by Georg Zeller. The film reflects on the tourist trips which are now taking place in Bosnia, 25 years after the bloodiest conflict to hit Europe since the end of the Second World War, notably examining the various ways in which tour operators handle the subject of the region’s horrific past, but also exploring the shared goals of these guides: the teaching of historical fact and the promotion of peace and reconciliation.

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(Translated from Italian)

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