The last Rally championship won by a car, with two driving wheels and not four like the very strong rival Audi.
It is the feat accomplished by Lancia, led by the iconic team manager Cesare Fiorio (winner of around twenty world titles in Rally, Formula 1, endurance and powerboating, here with the face of Riccardo Scamarcio) at the basis of Race for Glory : Audi vs.
Lance by Stefano Mordini.
The film, produced by Lebowski with Rai Cinema, co-produced by Davis Film In association with Mas Srl,.
it debuted in January in limited release and on platforms in the USA, and from March 14th it will arrive in Italian cinemas in 360 copies with Medusa.
The cast also includes Daniel Bruhl in the role of Roland Gumpert, Audi's sporting director, Volker Bruch as Lancia's top driver, Walter Rohrl and Gianmaria Martini in the part of Audi's first driver Hannu Mikkola, together with Katie Clarkson-Hill, Giorgio Montanini and among the cameos also Lapo Elkann in the role of grandfather Gianni Agnelli.
"I wasn't a rally enthusiast... then I saw some videos of the 1983 championship on the internet and I noticed one aspect - explains Riccardo Scamarcio who is also co-producer and co-writer of the film -. The comparison between genius, passion, a bit of madness and the cunning of a man, Cesare Fiorio, who manages to undermine the arrogance of technology and money. I found it was also the reflection of an Italian way of being and that it could refresh our idea of who we are".
Everything here is placed "within a sporting story that entertains the public", also telling "the simplicity and honesty of a mechanical and analogue world. Adjectives that are somewhat out of use in today's increasingly technocratic society, in which superheroes are always staged... here nobody flies but a world with a different conception is praised".
In the film we meet Fiorio at the start of the 1983 Rally championship, with Lancia under the pressure of Audi's victories under the guidance of Roland Gumpert, with a car that seems unbeatable thanks to the innovation of four-wheel drive.
however, the brilliant team manager, basing himself on the Lancia Stratos, focuses on the project of the competitive Lancia 037 which has various critical points.
To overcome them, Fiorio, for whom "the rally is like a war and I am the commander of an army", decides to hire as top driver what he considers "the best", Walter Rohr.
"A champion with an idea of independence from success - explains Bruch - he knows well that he is very good at what he does and he doesn't do it to be loved by others".
Between crises, victories, defeats, dramas, conflicts and sudden solutions (there are some narrative licenses in the plot, as stated at the end) the team reaches a turning point.
"It was a great emotion to see each other again, also because we are talking about a great victory, particularly significant, because we did not yet have Audi's technology. We had it from the following year, and from that point onwards we didn't have any. 'it was for no one anymore - comments Cesare Fiorio, born in 1939, who also appears in a brief cameo in the film with a smile -. It also tells of an era in which rallies were very popular and races were run between two wings of the crowd, certain races they were as important as those of Formula 1."
To convey the emotion and risks (including accidents) of racing, the speed, the relationship between cars and territory, Mordini decided not to resort to the use of special effects, "also thanks to the real cars made available by Lancia, we have played everything on realism".
The aesthetics of the film "and its beating heart coincide with simplicity and honesty" adds Scamarcio who, as an actor, loves to talk about "men moved by a passion and not by an economic return, idealists, like Cesare or like Modigliani (who plays in Modì, the new film by Johnny Depp, which just finished shooting, ed.) luckily I get characters like that."
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