An international cast and a love story that turns into a thriller full of pathos: Gabriele Muccino returns to theaters on October 31 with his new film “Fino alla Fine”, and at the Giffoni Film Festival he tells it like this: “It’s a film”. About choices. It tells the adventures of an American girl, a tourist, who in one night has to make decisions, some of which will take her in directions she never imagined and which are irreversible, a change of course that leads to an unimaginable path, to changes that can destabilize, surprise or derail. But our lives go off course, too, what we choose to do.” “Until the End” is set in Palermo and takes place over the course of 24 hours; the cast includes Saul Nani, Lorenzo Richelmi, Enrico Inserra, Francesco Garelli. And again Robbie Kammer, Yann Toal, Mitch Salem, Grace Ambrose, Siyama Rainer, and Samuel Kay. A group of twenty-somethings, still inexperienced in dealing with life, will discover how easy it is to make mistakes because “life is ultimately nothing more than the result of the choices we make.”
Mocchino arrives in Giffoni with Anas, also to raise awareness among young people about an important issue close to his heart: road safety. In fact, on the festival stage, he was the one who presented the award for best social ad for Anas’s campaign “When you drive, everything can wait”. The commercial, which highlights the distractions caused by mobile phones (one of the main causes of road accidents), and was created in collaboration with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport and the State Police, shows three influencers blocking out while making videos. “People who need to move are always the first to tell us: ‘We’re stopping because someone is driving’,” says Anas’s communications manager Marco Ludovico. The message of the ad, which is being shown in all the festival’s cinemas, is precisely that “youth must be taught how to manage time, not just suffer from it”. “The message can wait”, says Mocchino, who continues: “Years ago, due to a common distraction, I had a near-fatal accident in Greece, and I still have scars on my head. You should never lower your attention while driving.”
Furthermore, the subject of road accidents returns several times in the director’s films, from The Last Kiss to Seven Lives. “I’ve been obsessed with the telephone forever,” he says. “In the script for Seven Souls, the story was about a NASA general who believes he’s responsible for seven deaths in a shuttle explosion. I suggested something that the viewer could identify with.” Hence the accident due to distracted driving due to the use of the telephone.
“The accident is the fatal interruption of existence,” says Muccino. “I have used the accident other times in my films. I have often used cars as a super-machine, as dramatic elements that create a death, and therefore a very strong crisis within the story and the character.” In “Seven Souls,” Muccino reunites with Will Smith after the success of “The Pursuit of Happyness,” but for him Hollywood was just “an alignment of the planets, something I am happy about but it happened by chance. That is not my goal. The important thing for me is to express myself through cinema.”
“I was happy to work with him,” he said of Will Smith. “He taught me so much about perseverance and professionalism. I have never seen such an incredible inner strength in other actors I have worked with. He is one of those people who when he walks into a room, his energy changes. He is very dedicated to his craft, and always does his best to be the best. Tom Cruise is probably the only one who can match him in that, but I have never worked with him.” For Muccino, cinema is also a magic box that helped him overcome his stutter. “If I have made films, it is because I had a severe stutter when I was 16 or 17. With cinema, I have communicated who I am through a form of communication that makes other people talk. That disability has been the most important driving force that has pushed me to pursue this profession with momentum.”
“But – Moschino continues to the children at the festival – don’t ask me how inspiration comes because the themes of the films are like love at first sight. I think it is a gift to understand a story that can entertain and interest the audience. The best films are those that have a quick light. “In every work that surrounds us there is a film, we just need to understand how to make it interesting even in moments of confusion, loss, pity and emotion.” However, there is a distinctive element in his films that Moschino recognizes in “characters who always find themselves at a crossroads and have to make choices that cannot be postponed. But they are often too reckless, and this leads to chaos and a narrative that is always on the edge of the abyss.”
Source: La Presse
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