How to remain a family when Alzheimer’s devours your memory? “Per te”, film based on the true story of Mattia Piccoli

Talking with a smile lo tsunami dell’Alzheimer. Tell, with humour, with affection, with empathy, what happens when a family is hit by a diagnosis that falls like a cleaver. Knowing that one of your family members is affected by one early form of Alzheimer’s. And that everything that will happen is already, in some way, written. It wasn’t an easy task: he tackled it Alessandro Aronadiodirector of For you, presented to Rome Film Festival – in collaboration with Alice in the citywhich screened it on Saturday to an audience of eight hundred high school students. For you it is also in Italian cinemas. Played by Edoardo Leo and Teresa Saponangelo, For you is based on a true story: that of Mattia Piccolia boy awarded as “standard bearer of the Republic” by President Mattarella, for how he managed to taking care of his father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. The father, Paolo Piccoli, was struck by an early onset of the diseasewhen he was just forty years old. He is now 54, and lives with his family in the Belluno area. Everything you see in the film is based on the book A small time by Serenella Antoniazzi, a docu-novel inspired by the true story of Michela Morutto, wife of Paolo Piccoli, and their son Mattia. The film is very careful in its narration the first signs of the onset of the disease, forgetfulness, confusion, cognitive disorientation. But he is also very careful about dilute the weight of that diagnosisthat diagnosis that sounds like a sentence, with lighter, loving sequences: man, played by Edoardo Leoknows his future. But precisely for this reason gives himself and his family moments of joy, happiness, even though he knows that even his wife’s face may lose meaning for him. And that even a simple gesture like shaving could become an unsolvable puzzle, a relentless enigma. “I tried to pull a thread, like Philippe Petit between the Twin Towers, between tragedy and comedy”, says the director, Alessandro Aronadio. “And I wanted to talk about how important care is: understood as taking care of people, not as pharmacology”.

Leo Edit

Leo Edit he threw himself body and soul into the adventure of the film, which also sees him involved as a producer. “I wanted to co-produce the film with all of myself, tell it and interpret it,” Leo says. “There was a huge challenge: not to make a blackmail film. This film addresses a huge fear that we all have: the fear that the very conscience of people will slip out of our hands, of affections. Knowing that we will forget even the people closest to us: there is no greater fear.” “We live in an era in which the man who stumbles must not be framed“, says Aronadio. “We live in a time where the defect must be put out of scope. Instead, I believe that there is a very strong humanity in people, despite the fact that they want to tell us that we are all cynical and selfish. This film talks to us about our ability not to be cynical, to take care of other human beings.” In the film there are many clips of Buster Keaton: “It moves me to think of this man who, to make people laugh, risked his life with extremely dangerous scenes that he shot without a stunt double, jumping off roofs, breaking his vertebrae falling onto railway tracks. Paolo also risks his life, every minute, with a tenderness and a sense of the tragic that moves me every time.”

Teresa Saponangelo

“A diagnosis means a watershed between the present and the past: it means that from that moment on you have to build the future. I was very struck by the story of Michela Morutto, who had the double responsibility of moving forward, of leading her children towards the most peaceful future possible”, says Teresa Saponangelo, who plays Edoardo Leo’s wife in the film.

Alessandro Aronadio

“We have all experienced pain – says the director Aronadio – we all know the places of pain. But we know that our only option is to look at things with a different eye. Because in life tragedy and comedy mix at every moment: only cinema thinks that there are two separate places, that of tragedy and that of comedy”. The true concept, ultimately, is: how to remain a family, when a diagnosis of serious illness affects one of its members? How not to get lost, how not to give in to discouragementhow to react to suffering? How to stay united, how to find space for lightness? Try to tell it for yourself. Putting emotion aside, and trying – in every shot – to scratch the need to preserve lightness, tenderness, life.