Italy’s Chiara Bellosi On Her Progress as a Director With Coming-of Ager ‘Swing Journey’

Chiara Bellosi, whose first work, “Extraordinary Justice,” launched from Berlin’s Technology 14plus part in 2020, is again with “Swing Journey” (“Calcinculo”) about an chubby 15-year-old named Benedetta pining for consideration in an Italian province the place she falls in love with the thin non-binary Amanda.

A key distinction between the 2 movies is that whereas “Extraordinary Justice,” which examined the lives of two households on reverse sides of a homicide case, originated from a deeply researched screenplay that Bellosi wrote, “Swing Journey” — premiering in Panorama on Feb. 13 — stems from a prizewinning script proposed to her by Carlo Cresto Dina, her producer, who additionally found Alice Rohrwacher (“Comfortable as Lazzaro”) and is understood for nurturing the cream of Italy’s new cinematic crop.  

“It’s a really completely different course of; it was the primary time that I needed to begin from a world that didn’t germinate from me,” stated Bellosi about working from the script penned by Maria Teresa Venditti and Luca De Bei that received Italy’s prestigious Solinas prize in 2018.

It was like transferring into a brand new home that she needed to make her personal, she stated.

“I labored with the writers; I wished to make just a few tweaks and we did that collectively,” she added, noting that originally “it was a leap into the void.” However directing from their screenplay really ended up giving her “extra freedom” than her earlier pic as a result of “the container is already there; however you may go fairly wild with the remaining.”

This freedom additionally made it extra enjoyable. “And naturally who you might be seeps into the film anyway,” she stated. “It seeps into the way you see the characters; the way you shoot; the way you inform the story. The imaginative and prescient is certainly your individual.”

Born in 1973 within the Northern lakeside metropolis of Como, Bellosi studied drama at Milan’s Civica Scuola di Teatro Paolo Grassi and subsequently bought a grasp’s diploma in documentary movie on the Istituto Europeo di Design in Venice. In 2006 she shot a brief that was a section of omnibus doc “Checosamanca,” produced by Cresto Dina, which ultimately led to him shepherding “Extraordinary Justice.” Within the interim, Bellosi bought passionately concerned in social work for a number of years, however continued to jot down.

“Swing Journey,” which was shot over a six-week interval in the course of the pandemic within the city of Guidonia, outdoors Rome, is a darkish fable portraying the friendship between Benedetta, performed by newcomer Gaia Di Pietro, and binary Amanda, performed by Andrea Carpenzano (“The Champion,” “Beautiful Boy”) whom Benedetta decides to observe in her “stray world,” as Bellosi put it.

To prep the inexperienced Di Pietro, she used an appearing coach. However actually “the principle factor was to get to know Gaia as a lot as attainable” earlier than the shoot, she stated. With Carpenzano, the one prep they did was simply assembly a few occasions to speak and realizing they “shared a language.”

How vital was it that Amanda is non-binary character?

For Bellosi Amanda’s gender was by no means a lot of a difficulty. “The query all the time was: who’s Amanda for Benedetta?,” she stated. And the important thing factor there may be that “she’s clearly a catalyst” to Benedetta’s empowerment.

By way of tone what Belllosi was striving for was a movie combining naturalism “with the overarching really feel of a fable.”

Going ahead, Bellosi doesn’t know what her subsequent mission can be. Or no less than, she’s not saying. However she’s positive that to this point a very powerful factor in her profession “has been the liberty to create and experiment,” she stated.

“Movie is sort of a utopia; it’s a world that doesn’t exist, however then you definately construct it with different individuals, after which it exists. That’s the journey I’m all for.”