There’s a film genre which is enjoying great success right now and whose apex arguably comes in the form of The Fault in Our Stars, which combines terminal illness and romance to dramatic effect in a coming-of-age tale. Noi anni luce, Tiziano Russo’s first work which, according to its producer Notorious Pictures, has just commenced filming, also slots into this category.

Seventeen-year-old Elsa hasn’t really got started on her adolescence when she discovers it might already be over: she has leukaemia and she needs a bone marrow transplant immediately. The only possible donor is someone whose name and whose whereabouts are totally unknown to her: her father. Accompanying her on this journey in search of her forebear is Edo, a boy her age who she met in hospital. Elsa and Edo don’t seem to have anything in common, apart from the fact they both have the same illness, from which he is now pretty much cured. Or at least that’s what he’s told her.

The lead actors in this film, written by Isabella Aguilar (Ten Winters [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Michele Riondino - acteur
interview : Valerio Mieli
fiche film], The Place [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
making of
fiche film], the series Tutto può succedere and Baby) and Serena Tateo, are Carolina Sala (of the series Fidelity, and Crystal Girl [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
interview : Domenico Croce
fiche film]) and Rocco Fasano (of the series SKAM Italia, and Non mi uccidere [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film]), who are joined by Caterina Guzzanti in the role of Elsa’s mother Katia, and Fabio Troiano playing her father Pietro.

“I’ll explore the conflicts, the contradictions, the light-heartedness and the battles that each of us partake of in order to be happy and to love. I’ll explore the bright years of our life”, Tiziano Russo insisted in a press release, while Notorious Pictures’ CEO & Chairman Guglielmo Marchetti stressed that “the director is a hugely talented youngster who we met through the first edition of the Notorious Project, which he won with his short film L’uomo proibito and who directed the fifth season of SKAM Italia” to successful effect.