Nanni Moretti returns to the centre of his films. After having gradually stepped aside, almost disappearing in Three floorsin his last The sun of the future is once again the star. He plays the part of a director who is making a project initially set in the 1950s. The protagonist is Ennio, a journalist of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) who writes for L’Unità. Reality mixes with fiction, in some sequences it even borders on musical. Ennio is played by Silvio Orlando.
“My character embodies a figure I got to know by spending some time in the Party. He is touching, respectable, an idealist. But he can’t see clearly what surrounds him. Once upon a time, the party was the home, the family, the definition of oneself, a collective dream. It meant resisting external violence, poverty. There was the famous phrase that said: “The private is political”, because it determined relationships between people. People argued, they stopped talking for an ideal”, Orlando explains. Alongside him, in addition to Moretti, there are also Margherita Buy, Mathieu Almaric and Barbora Bobulova. The sun of the future will be in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
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How has the way of doing politics changed over time?
“A sort of disenchantment has taken over. Society is different. We used to move as a mass, now we are individualists. This is an aspect that has overwhelmed us. My generation was faced with other challenges. Now we are focused on a fierce climb to power, a continuous battle.”
What is missing today?
“Probably hope. We are trying to pick up the pieces, but the feeling is that we are no longer masters of our own destiny. We thought that our stories could change things, but it is no longer like that. Everyone closes themselves off
in a small bubble, where it tries to survive. It is difficult to organize a political project, to tend towards a better world. We continue to destroy, never to build».
Who is Nanni Moretti?
«(Laughs, ed.). Meeting him means coming into contact with cinema. He made me grow a lot, he gave me awareness. He helps you find a meaning, this is a point of arrival in his life».
In The Young Pope And The New Pope by Paolo Sorrentino you were Cardinal Angelo Voiello.
“It’s true, it was an important test. It was an uncomfortable context: a big production full of international stars that I wasn’t used to, acting in a language that wasn’t mine, that I wasn’t familiar with. Luckily the character was written in a divine way (laughs, ed.)”.
What is your relationship with religion?
“It is not easy to have faith and win against laziness, to be truly involved. Often we accept turning a blind eye, but it is not right. The relationship with God should be total. Sometimes it scares, it distances. We try to be fair, to never hurt others. However, there is a commandment that I am bound to: “You shall have no other Gods before me”. It has determined my life. Man must put something above himself in his choices. When human beings believe they can replace God, terrifying catastrophes occur”.
In The sun of the future it also reflects on the family.
“Unfortunately, it’s one of the aspects in which I feel least fulfilled. My childhood was hard, my mother died very early. It’s not easy to save yourself alone, you have to have a strategy. Then my wife and I weren’t able to have children. We are a wonderful couple, but perhaps when we refer to family we mean something else.”
Future projects?
«I risk becoming the “greatest dying Italian actor” (laughs, ed.). They will be roles where you risk your skin… With Paolo Virzì we pick up the thread of August holidaysto find out what happened decades later. Filming will start in June. With Paolo Sorrentino, instead, we are working on an allegorical story about Naples. At the center will be a girl, in the initiation rite of her life. I will be one of the people she comes into contact with».
She is from Naples. Do you follow football?
“Of course. We are very happy to be able to make this beautiful dream come true. On some occasions I followed the team away, they even dedicated a banner to me at the stadium: “Voiello uno di noi”… But in Naples we have to be careful, because we are our own spoilsports. There is fear and expectation. We must avoid illusions, the awakening can be hard, and hurt”