25/05/2006

"It certainly was not easy to choose the nine interviews of the Italian Jews who survived the Holocaust. Complex lives flowed before me, which did not stop even when, as children, they entered the extermination camps and saw their parents shot before their eyes. I couldn’t sleep for many months, listening to these very touching and very powerful stories. So I made my selections trusting the sympathies and emotions that slowly grew within me".

This is how Mimmo Calopresti explains his difficulties in making the documentary Volevo solo vivere (lit. “I Only Wanted to Live”), made for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation and presented out of competition at Cannes.

The film was produced by Gagè, Wildside Media, in co-production with RAI Cinema, Ventura Films and RTSI-Televisione Svizzera, and will be available on DVD for rental at the end of August and for sale mid-October, with commentary by Spielberg.

Calopresti hopes to return soon to making his new film, whose working title is L'invito (lit. “The Invitation”), which is being produced by Istituto Luce and will star Gerard Depardieu and Toni Servillo.