Anna Foglietta: “Alfredino’s mother and the great dignity of her pain”

And I’ll take care of you. The emotion of Anna Foglietta, which once again confirms her extraordinary skill, is all in these words: «I am very excited, never like today, despite the fact that I am a fairly experienced actress. I felt a great responsibility from the very beginning, the same one that today excites me in returning all the work we have done. If there is one word that for me is linked to this film, it is respect and care. During the shooting I listened to Battiato’s song a lot.

I often repeated to myself, when discouragement took over, “and I’ll take care of you.” I wanted to take particular care in bringing Franca Rampi to the screen, the great dignity of her pain and her struggle so that what happened to Alfredino would never happen again ».

Anna Foglietta tells us this Alfredino – An Italian story, the miniseries on air on 21 and 28 June on Sky Cinema and streaming on Now. The actress was two years forty years ago, when on 10 June 1981 Alfredo «Alfredino» Rampi fell into an artesian well, in the countryside, via di Vermicino, a few kilometers from Rome. Alfredino was 6 years old and the attempts to get him out of that well were unfortunately all in vain. For three days, told, for the first time in the history of Italy, in a tragic live TV.

“There isn’t a person in Italy who doesn’t know who Alfredino Rampi was. Alfredino’s story concerns us all, it is our wound ». Director Marco Pontecorvo, together with the writers Barbara Petronio e Francesco Balletta, he started from here, with one goal: to keep out of the four episodes (a Sky Original production with Lotus), «the more violent than that story expected: the pornography of pain».

vf-6259490721001

The story, in fact, has a rigorous style, it never shows the child inside the well, he never lingers in the morbidity of the news – although it was not obvious – and, indeed, tries to go further: retraces the facts of Vermicino always with his gaze projected on Alfredo Rampi Center (born in 1981, by the will of Franca Rampi, to promote the prevention of environmental risk and the improvement of technical and psychological rescue in emergencies, ed), who was involved in the development of the series, and on the birth of civil protection, commissioned after the tragedy by President Pertini, also thanks to the strength and great lucidity of Franca Rampi. “Franca had the strength to turn this terrible story into a positive one, to say this thing must never happen again,” explains Foglietta. “Mrs. Rampi understood that it was also the fault of a bad organization of the various forces involved in the field, and made sure that things could change.”

There are also in the cast Luca Angeletti in the role of Ferdinando, Alfredino’s father, Vinicio Marchioni (Nando Broglio, the firefighter who tried to keep Alfredo company and motivate during those terrible hours), Francesco Acquaroli (the commander of the fire brigade Elveno Pastorelli), Beniamino Marcone, Giacomo Ferrara, Daniele La Leggia, Valentina Romani, Riccardo De Filippis and Massimo Dapporto in the role of Sandro Pertini. “I remember our red TV, small, black and white, and my mother stuck in front of it watching what was happening. It is a bit like our 11 September, our open wound, ”Marchioni said.

“I wondered if it was right to tell this story or not, but then I said to myself that it had to be done honestly»Explains the director Pontecorvo. «We read the minutes, covered the hours of live coverage, we worked side by side with the Rampi center, met the parties involved, the speleologists, the firefighters. We went down into the well with them, experienced with them the impossibility of descending, the claustrophobia and the frustration of not being able to save Alfredino. To tell Italy in its worst and best sides ».

The reason for doing it now, after 40 years, explains the psychotherapist and president of the Rampi Center, Rita Di Iorio: «Up to now, naming Alfredino has always led Italians to fall into a well, in the impotence for not having been able to save him, but that death was not in vain, the association was born, the Civil Protection was born. Centro Rampi has decided to support this series because for the first time we felt the desire to want to tell something to remember, but also to go further, to understand everything that was born after. Without exploiting the pain».

Massimo Dapporto is the president Pertini: «In 1981 I was 35 years old, that story has remained very impressed on me. And when they offered me this role, I said to myself “how can I physically remember Pertini?”, Then I cut my mustache and discovered that under there was a Pertini hidden. That year Italy had become a huge family that gathered around Alfredino’s real family ».