untitled design

Sergio Castellitto: “Social media are destined to die”

Sergio Castellitto signs his latest film as a director (he says). This is de He memotional meal (from 7 October in theaters) based on the graphic novel A cloud-shaped dragon, scripted by Ettore Scola, Fulvio Scarpelli and Silvia Scola. The writer wife of Sergio Margaret Mazzantini put a hand to that text, and the film was born, starring the Roman and French actor. Berenice Bejo.

It is no coincidence that the film is set in Paris, where he lives in a world of his own Vincenzo (Castellitto), mostly made “of the ghosts of the characters who inhabit the texts in his library», says the actor and director. His daughter lives with him, above the old shop Albertine (Matilda De Angelis), confined to a wheelchair after an accident. Like his father, his is an inviolable world. One day Yolande (Bejò) shows up in the bookshop, an exuberant actress, who lives on illusions, a little dazed but brings a breath of fresh air to the low-cut life of Vincenzo and Albertine.

Vincenzo lives from his books: «Literature makes you eternal, actuality makes you fragileHe claims. And Castellitto feels a bit like him: «I’m not social, they say today. I have no profiles Instagram or Facebook. Nor do I have only one in profile: that of this face with this nose that has been working me for forty years. Social media make us slavesHe is convinced Castellitto, «The widespread truth, disturbingly democratic, allows everyone to talk about everything, without however enabling us to choose. Even in this apparent continuous answering, there is a total absence of communication. For me, social networks are destined to die».

Browse gallery

Somehow Emotional material he seems to have somewhat prophesied the pandemic: “Vincenzo also lives distant from others and chooses as friends the characters in the books he reads.”

«We have all changed with the pandemic experience, I don’t know if he has improved us, I have serious doubts about this », says Castellitto. Reviewing the film “it is as if another person had made it”, underlines the director and actor, “but an artist should change all the time, even if he doesn’t want to, because an artist worthy of the name must be a sponge, a liver that becomes intoxicated and detoxified ».

Castellitto takes us on an emotional journey between worlds that intertwine and miraculously coexist, between reality and fiction, between cinema, literature and theater. Too bad it’s his last film as a director: “I understood serenely that it is not a job cut out for me “, he comments, “it takes a beastly physique to do it. I work so well as an actor, and then acting is a bit like telling a story through the characters you play. Anyway, at home there is a young man who is very good at making films, but who has no intention of signing me yet », he smiles.

Castellitto speaks of the son Pietro, fresh from the success of The predators. “I asked him to take me for the part hanged man, I would also have seen myself in the distance, there was nothing to do », says father Sergio who dreams of acting in a film by Pietro to his 67-year-old beauty.

You may also like

Get the latest

Stay Informed: Get the Latest Updates and Insights

 

Most popular