Riccardo Scamarcio and Benedetta Porcaroli: “Love despite everything”

Giuseppe Piccioni in the movie The shadow of the day (in cinemas from 24 February) takes us to his 1938 Ascoli Piceno, two years before Italy entered the war, and tells us the love story between Luciano (Riccardo Scamarcio) and Anna (Benedetta Porcaroli), a girl who one day shows up in front of the window of the lonely man’s restaurant to ask for work. Luciano accepts and from that moment his life takes on a new light, he opens up to feelings as he had never done beforeeven if in the background there is the shadow of war, fascism and a secret around Anna.

“Despite the context, love blossoms “he claims Riccardo Scamarcio. And just in telling this story it also resulted between the two actors. As they say: convict was the set. Even if they prefer not to talk about it. “This is an engulfed love story from such a great historical moment that it does not allow it to manifest itself freely “, says the actress from Babyfor the first time in the role of a woman so distant from today’s world.

Despite the gap between the two “Anna made me reflect on many things, about myself, about the times of the language of the time and of the perception and restitution of emotions “, explains Benedetta Porcaroli,” times were more dilated than the speed of today and the bulimia of everyday life. Perhaps we should stop and listen to the other ». And then Anna made the young actress reflect «on the human border that goes beyond the moral boundary: despite what we are told there is something on which we do not compromise, and it is human empathy “. As if to say: love cannot be commanded.

Also Scamarcio agrees with his partner and wonders about the figure of Luciano: “He has perhaps a better moral stature than mine, he has the ability not to protest, to accept many things as they are, but then he too yields to human empathy”, to love.

The shadow of the day «Is somewhat reminiscent of the cinema of Ettore Scola which teaches us to be indulgent with ourselves “, Scamarcio is convinced,” films of this kind serve to warm hearts, to put us in contact with the most authentic part of ourselves and to make us accept ours defeats, limits, inabilities and defects. We need this type of cinema in a historical moment not so different from what is described in the film, where a deep sense of fear“.