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PRODUCTION Italy / Germany / France

Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden is in post-production

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- This loose adaptation of Jack London’s novel is an Avventurosa, IBC Movie, Match Factory and Shellac Sud co-production, whose release date confirms its likely participation in the Venice Film Festival

Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden is in post-production
Luca Marinelli in Martin Eden

Pietro Marcello’s hotly anticipated second work, Martin Eden [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pietro Marcello
film profile
]
, is currently in post-production and is highly likely to be selected for the Venice Film Festival 2019. Thanks to his earlier documentaries (especially The Mouth of the Wolf [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pietro Marcello
film profile
]
, champion of the Torino Film Festival in 2009) and then his first work Lost and Beautiful [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pietro Marcello ­
film profile
]
(rewarded by Locarno’s youth jury in 2015), Marcello has made a name for himself as one of the most talented, independent and visionary young directors working in Italy today.

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His second attempt at a full-length fiction film is attracting interest, not only for its subject - a loose adaptation of Jack London’s celebrated novel – but also for the presence of an extraordinarily versatile and talented actor, namely Luca Marinelli. Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Frémaux would have liked to have had the film on the Croisette: "I talked with Pietro Marcello a lot about his Martin Eden, which is my favourite book. I can’t wait to see it in the autumn”, the delegate general enthused in May during an interview with an Italian newspaper. Set in a perfect port city towards the end of the last century, Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden is an archetype who is rendered and transposed through the workings of the tale. "Like the characters of Hamlet and Faust, Martin Eden is a somewhat failed hero", the director explained to Cineuropa shortly before he began filming the project. Marcello wrote the screenplay alongside Maurizio Braucci (with Piranhas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Roberto Saviano
film profile
]
and The Intruder [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
featuring among their most recent collaborations). "We transposed the novel into modern-day society and into a story which takes us through different time periods". For Pietro Marcello, "there’s class betrayal" in the film, a theme bringing to mind films by Ken Loach and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne where the modern-day economic order depicted points towards a weakening of rights and drives ever further towards a desperate war between the workers themselves.

Appearing the cast alongside Marinelli are Marco Leonardi, Vincenzo Nemolato, Rinat Khismatouline, Pietro Ragusa, Aniello Arena, Lana Vlady, Jessica Cressy and Carlo Cecchi. The photography is that of Francesco di Giacomo and Alessandro Abate, while the editing can be credited to Fabrizio Federico and Aline Hervé. Luca Servino is to thank for the set design and Andrea Cavalletto for the costumes. Marco Messina and Sacha Ricci, meanwhile, are entrusted with the film’s music.  

Martin Eden is an Italy/Germany/France co-production between the director’s own company Avventurosa, IBC Movie, Match Factory Productions, Shellac Sud and RAI Cinema, with the support of MiBAC. The Match Factory are in charge of international sales and 01 Distribution have already announced the film’s Italian release will take place on 4 September, a date which confirms the movie’s likely participation in the Venice Film Festival.

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(Translated from Italian)

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