23/03/2006

Along with film journalists, there were also many political and current events reporters at the screening of The Caiman [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jean Labadie
interview: Nanni Moretti
film profile] by Nanni Moretti, which is being released tomorrow on 380 screens. Because the new film by the angriest, most moralising, rebellious and idiosyncratic director of Italian cinema is a highly "political" film. To all those who thought that the film was based on Silvio Berlusconi, we can assure you that The Caiman is a movie about the current Italian president.

Just two weeks before the elections, Moretti has entered the political debate through his satirical filmmaking, to present a slice of historical memory "in brief", revisiting the rise of the "character" Berlusconi, the man who has conditioned Italians’ lives for the past 20 years: from his beginnings as a builder with dubiously acquired capital, to the creation of his media empire, his “mandatory” political decision, and through to the trial at which he received a 7-year sentence for corruption.

Around this premise, Moretti develops the personal stories of a director/producer in crisis (Silvio Orlando) and a young screenwriter/director (Jasmine Trinca), who are surrounded by a series of characters representing Italian cinema (with its crises and pettiness), who subsequently symbolise, on a larger scale, a people that seem like nothing more than brightly coloured Lego pieces, which the director spreads out across an entire apartment. "A nation halfway between horror and folklore", as says the character of a Polish producer, played by a magnificent Jerzy Stuhr.

With a budget of €8m, the film is a co-production between Moretti’s Sacher Film and France’s Bac Films (which has a 30% stake), Stephan Films, France 3 Cinéma, with the collaboration of Wild Bunch, Canal + and CineCinema.

(Translated from Italian)