Mainetti, a Brancaleone Army looking for hugs

"Too cool to look like Avengers, tougher and even nicer than the Brancaleone Army, in short, irresistible different": Claudio Santamaria, who in the film is all covered in hair like a dog-man ("four hours of make-up a day I don't mean other, I was reading Il Conte di Montecristo "), tries to put labels on the homeless, dirty, cowardly but very lively circus performers of Freaks Out. Gabriele Mainetti's film today in competition at Venice 78 is a (rare) Italian blockbuster that aspires to find the large audience of the room ready to be amazed by this story written with Nicola Guaglianone (from an original subject of the latter), the same duo that in 2015, in addition to the many awards, brought 1 million spectators to the cinema with Lo Chiamavano Jeeg Robot. The company is now titanic given the times,but we try (and maybe hopefully even an Oscar nomination) from 28 October with 01.

    The film has as its background the occupied Rome of '43: Matilde, Cencio, Fulvio and Mario, each a freak, live as brothers in the circus of Israel, a Jew who disappears at a certain point. In the city occupied by the Nazis they try to remain inseparable and try to find work in the only active circus, that of the crazy Franz who tests characters with superpowers to make the Fuhrer win the war. "We touch history, we re-elaborate it, we mix the past, the present and the future because in this adventure from Armata Brancaleone, in this coming-of-age novel which is also a story of diversity, in the end everyone - he tells ANSA Mainetti - is really looking for like us in this period more than ever one thing: the embrace ".

    Produced by Andrea Occhipinti (Lucky Red) and by Mainetti himself with his Goon Films and with Rai Cinema (CEO Paolo Del Brocco spoke of a "watershed film for Italian cinema", underlining its ambitions), Freaks Out "is a spectacular film precisely because it does not run away from the spectacle as is usually used to making Italian cinema. I read on the script that the gas crematorium exploded and on the set it really exploded. all the characters ", says Pietro Castellitto rightly, who in the film is a generous gullible albino boy. "In all this staging, the maniacal Mainetti - continues Castellitto - had as a priority the enhancement of the actors.For me it was a master in acting and directing, I would never have made my first film - I predatori awarded at Venice 77, ed - without this great experience ".

    Mainetti also composed the music together with Michele Braga (Edizioni Curci and Goon Films) in a soundtrack performed by the Czech national symphony orchestra of Prague.

    In the film, which is full of cinematic citations, homages to Italian comedy and the season of neorealism (but without arrogance) and even a bit of Spielberg, there are also Giancarlo Martini, Max Mazzotta, Franz Rogowski, and Giorgio Tirabassi but the superheroine is Matilde (Aurora Giovinazzo), "a tormented girl, with a troubled past, a desire for family, an underlying naivety that at the right moment transforms her into a formidable decisive warrior". These freak phenomena "are certainly masks - continues ANSA Santamaria - caricatures but there is a soul to support them. It's true I look like Chewbacca from Star Wars but not so one-dimensional, behind the hair there is substance". Overcoming, metabolizing an exploit like Jeeg Robot's was not easy "and what do we tell now? So with Guaglianone we thought about monsters who acted like men and men who acted like monsters. The superpowers? I don't want labels of genres ". Cinema" phantasmagoric but credible in its human affairs ", as Santamaria emphasizes. The 12 weeks of shooting have become 26, a leavened budget, a troubled edition," but the result is amazement and fun , without looking for easy emotions but trying to make the cinema that I love, that of powerful stories ".a leavened budget, even a troubled edition, "but the result is amazement and fun, without looking for easy emotions but trying to make the cinema I love, that of powerful stories".a leavened budget, even a troubled edition, "but the result is amazement and fun, without looking for easy emotions but trying to make the cinema I love, that of powerful stories".