“40 seconds” and “Five seconds” move in Rome

The Rome Film Festival, on the third day of its 20th edition, it is protected by the God of Cinema, the one who gave us the precious seconds of two films that define this day and which will cause a lot of talk about themselves upon their cinema release: 40 seconds Of Vincenzo Alfieri, presented in the Progressive Cinema e competition Five seconds from the teacher Paolo Virzì in Grand Public and in theaters with Vision from October 30th.

He excites, he moves Virzì, as perhaps he hasn’t done before The Crazy Joy, Why Five seconds tells of a grumpy man, played by Valerio Mastandreawho lives alone in a ruined villa, and seems to have given up any possibility of contact with others, as if in penance. Virzì follows him in the meeting and almost clash with a group of boys gathered in what would once have been defined as a commune, determined to cultivate the land, rehabilitate it, well led by the Countess Matilde (Galatea Bellugi), owner of those places in the past. Helping himself with the slow progression of the seasons, Virzì gradually reveals the origin of Adriano’s pain and malaise, this is his name. Living with these boys, with Matilde, will find him, as he had once been, a paternal, nurturing figure, when the young, pregnant woman asks him for help. “It is certainly a very painful film for me – Virzì declares at the opening of the press conference – pI am pleased that we see a glimmer of confidence towards the possibility of making amends, after the journey through mourning and pain. The premise of this story was to start from the darkness from the abyss of a person and to understand what can happen in his soul. Discovering that there are dilemmas, a severe look at oneself, and that this discussion can concern certain issues, what it means to be a father, to have children, what a family is, how to reformulate this concept”.

Fundamental for Paolo Virzì bring this story to the stage with a familiar face, that of Valerio Mastandrea, already companion of five films: “I was fascinated by the themes that this story could touch on, the way of telling it seemed like an exciting challenge, keeping the cards of the story hidden and revealing them gradually and making the viewer imagine them. I had an illustration in mind that could be of an uninviting nature, certainly not the postcard Tuscany we are used to and then I had Valerio’s face in mind from the beginning. For the first time I saw Valerio after a take who continued to tremble with emotion and I must say that everyone on the set was crying, everyone was moved”.

Confirm that Five seconds it was a film with a different approach from the previous ones, Valerio Mastandrea, confessing: “Maybe this character is the only one in which there is more stuff about me than what I sew into myself but it’s deep stuff and I don’t even know what I’m talking about, I only know that in certain scenes I was overwhelmed, I didn’t have to work with my head like I usually do, because even if I look like a gut actor, I’m not.” Five SecondsIt is a story of failure and rebirth, of care that it brings “Perhaps” to rebuild itself a little, it is the story of fathers, seen with a different gaze from the previous ones in Virzì’s cinema: “I have told a gallery of manipulative, dysfunctional, disconcerting fathers, this time I wanted to look at fatherhood with a little more tenderness. There is not a celebration of the father but a reflection. I am open to the possibility that there may be many ways of being a parent, and therefore perhaps let’s say a father can serve, sometimes he does harm, sometimes he can do good”.

From the emotional tears and reflections of Five Seconds we move on to a news story from which we have never really freed ourselves and which Vincenzo Alfieri find the key to telling. That of Willy Monteiro Duarte, killed during a beating on 6 September 2020 a Colleferro in an attempt to defend a friend in difficulty. 40 seconds it is the time in which Willy lost his life and it was, perhaps, on paper, impossible to tell his story without the risk of being rhetorical, of raising him up almost as a superhero when his was a gesture of solidarity of help, of care, of humanity, which we should all do.

Vincenzo Alfieri he tells us about the hours preceding the event at the heart of his film, he tries to investigate who the protagonists of the story are and were, with a streamlined narrative divided into chapters. He writes in the director’s notes: “When I was asked to write a film about his death, I was initially reticent. I didn’t understand what could drive me, what my point of view would be. Somehow it seemed to be a story that was almost too simple for the big screen, a story that people already knew everything about. And I couldn’t be more wrong. When I read Federica Angeli’s book I had an epiphany, immediately in the first pages, the writer asks herself a question: Willy and his How did the murderers begin the day that led to their end? Will they have had breakfast, hugged their families, gone to work and fulfilled their usual routine? Because this story is mostly about ordinary kids. It is not a crime story, but of pain. A story of people like all of us.”

Alfieri, with the support of Francesco Di Leva in the role of a policeman and man of justice he approaches the film with the gaze of a father and with that type of awareness: “The film is multigenerational – he declares – I conceived it thinking of both teenagers and their parents, creating some archetypes, we were inspired by the true story to create a world for the characters in the film. I approached him as a new father and asked myself, as a father, what I would have advised my son: maintain indifference so someone else will get hurt or intervene and perhaps face your own death. It’s a question that really has no answer.” 40 seconds will be released in theaters on November 19th by Eagle Pictures but high school students will be able to see it two days earlier. Eagle had done something similar with The boy with the pink trousers, box office success right after his transition to Alice in the City last year.

The producer remembers it Roberto Proia: “The boy with the pink trousers created a watershed moment and reminded us that a box office success allows you to do good at the same time. This is the power of cinema. We had been working on the book 40 seconds for some time but we had no idea how to put it into a screenplay. Vincenzo Alfieri and Giuseppe Stasi presented us with a wonderful script, the only possible way to stage that story.” “Schools are fundamental – continues Proia – because if we made this film for adults and children, if we don’t capture the taste of the latter, we have failed.”