02/10/2003

After the success of La capagira, the low-budget film acclaimed at Berlin in 1999 which also won a plethora of prizes in Italy, the director from Puglia, Alessandro Piva, is back on the big screen. This Friday sees the release of his second film, My Brother-In-Law [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which he wrote together with his brother, Andrea, and Salvatore De Mola. The film was presented at the last edition of the Locarno Festival. This time, Piva had a more solid production (Dada Film, RAICinema) and he was working with a budget of around €2.5 million.

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The characters of Toni and Vito, brothers-in-law who have completely opposing personalities, are played by two of the most well known faces in the world of Italian cinema: Sergio Rubini and Luigi Lo Cascio. There is an obvious comparison with Dino Risi’s The Easy Life , though obviously with the necessary distance taken, in the treatment of these two opposite, yet complementary characters. The film is about the "confrontation between two very different men" explained the director. A confrontation "that gives the man who is less of an expert, the opportunity to discover new things about himself and about life. The protagonists are prototypes of the Southern middle class. Toni is the adventurous one, who votes for the political party that will do the best for him, the businessman who wants everything and wants it now, plagued by worries about his social status. Vito is a more modest middle class man, but he has equally disturbing characteristics. He’s just as greedy as Toni, but he has a bit more self censorship, which thwarts his ambitions".

Once again, Piva has chosen to use “his” Bari as a location, just like in his first feature film, travelling through the suburbs and the lesser known areas. 90 prints of My Brother-In-Law will be released in Italy by 01 Distribution.