Great theater performer, both acted and sung, film and TV actress, Lina Sastri has also decided to make her directorial debut with a very personal story. Ninetta’s housethe film in which she also stars in the role of a woman who partly follows herself, is her homage to her beloved mother Anna, known as Ninetta, who in the film has the face of Maria Pia Calzone as a young woman (Gomorrah, Sirens…) and as an elder that of Angela Pagano, who in her long career has worked with Eduardo De Filippo, Pupella Maggio, Franca Valeri.
When her mother fell ill with Alzheimer’s and Lina Sastri divided her time between her home in Rome and her home in Naples, where Ninetta was cared for by three women who were more friends than carers, Faced with the fading of memories, he decided to put his life on paper and the book was published Ninetta’s house (Editions Guide). «After having created a theatrical monologue based on the book, I thought of a film as a bet. It wasn’t easy”, says the actress-director, “it took me years to find the financing, then I decided to write the screenplay and also produce it and only at that point did I propose it to Rai Cinema, which accepted the project, and then to Run Film, which supported me. Once created, with little means and a lot of heart, I had the satisfaction of presenting it at Bif&st 2024, ItaliaFilmFest/Nuovo Cinema Italiano».
The story starts with Lucia (Lina’s alter ego) who returns to Naples to visit her mother with a heavy heart due to a love story that isn’t going well. He has a sloppy, neglected appearance, basically he doesn’t like himself. Coming home is a bit like returning to a mother’s embrace, to when she and her brother, who is no longer here, were children, and their father still lived with them, even though he traveled back and forth to Brazil. Until he never returned: he remained across the ocean, where he had two more children by two different women, and Ninetta had to raise her children alone. The story, therefore, travels between past and present, between the mother who is the pillar of her life and the mother who needs to be cared for.
«This film is an act of love towards Ninetta, who was a mother and a special woman, light and noble like light and music. Bright, unpredictable, courageous Ninetta; Ninetta with her fairy and dreamlike world. My mother had not been able to study beyond the second grade and yet she was a refined, naturally elegant woman; she loved my father even though he could be violent.”
And then, all around, there is Naples. «The Naples that I remember with nostalgia, with its magic, its light. I told my mother like a fairy tale suspended between reality and imagination, dressed in the watercolor colors of Naples, its simplicity, its richness, its emotions». A female film, so much so that even the workers are mostly women. And the three caregivers almost have the function of a Greek choir. In a film about Naples, music and songs could not be missing. «The voice that you sometimes hear singing is Ninetta’s original one, which I managed to record before she left. He naturally sang amazingly. While the original end credits song, All for mewith my lyrics and music by Adriano Pennino, I sing it myself.”
The film tells the story of Lina Sastri’s difficult childhood, but not how her encounter with the theater came about. «I graduated from classical high school, I had never been to the theater, apart from small plays when I was in nursery school with the nuns, but a friend introduced me to Eduardo De Filippo and I understood that that would be my path. He was my teacher. And I practically ran away from home to feel free, without ever denying everything my mother had done for me.”
His career in brief
Lina Sastri’s career, which began with the theater under the sign of Eduardo De Filippo, was very intense and all-round, so much so that in 2011 she earned the title of Commander of Merit from the President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano. At the cinema it was also directed by two American directors and actors, Woody Allen (With Rome to love) and John Turturro (Passion). In 2020 he participated in the 15th edition of Dancing with the starsand, ipaired with the dancer Simone Di Pasquale. Among his last shows at the theater Blood wedding by Federico García Lorca directed by Lluís Pasqual.
