(ANSA) - ROME, JUN 06 - A film "about friendships that cyclical" and a love letter "to the summers of our youth". This is how the Genoese director Enrico Casarosa, nominated for an Oscar for the animated short in 2012 with La luna, tells of his first feature film, also signed for Pixar / Disney, Luca, an animated fantasy comedy coming up exclusively from June 18 on Disney +. Casarosa, born in 1971, returns to the places of his growth in Liguria and in particular the Cinqueterre, but in a different era, identifiable between the late 1950s and early 1960s. An Italy full of sun, hope, desire for freedom (symbolized in the film by the desire of the protagonists to launch themselves into the world on a Vespa).
"I was a shy child very protected by my family - explains the filmmaker in the international press conference instreaming - and when I met my best friend at 11 my world opened up. In those summers you grow up and find yourself". Those friendships "help us find ourselves and understand who we want to be". "Those coastal places, between the sea and the mountains, with perched towns and many cliffs that also have a metaphoric value for me, represent the courage to take risks" were also fundamental. At the center of the story is the thirteen year old Luca Paguro, a green / purple sea creature (men call them monsters) who lives with his family at the bottom of the sea. The prudent Luca actually has an overwhelming curiosity for the world outside the water.
However, he finds the courage to explore it only thanks to the encounter with his contemporary Alberto Scorfano, pushing himself to the point of contact with humans in the imaginary village of Portorosso, where they meet the brilliant and determined Giulia. The film has among the original voice actors Jacob Tremblay, MayaRudolph, Jim Gaffigan, Sacha Baron Cohen and Italians who also act in the English version as Saverio Raimondo, Giacomo Gianniotti, Marco Barricelli, Marina Massironi. In the Italian version there are also the voices, among others, of Luca Argentero (for Luca's father) and the cameos of Fabio Fazio, Orietta Berti and Luciana Littizzetto, but also of Alberto, the director's true childhood friend. (HANDLE).