‘Forever With You’ Director Explores Grief Through a Child’s Eyes: ‘Cinema Must Be Emotionally Rooted’ — SkimNews
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- Forever With You received its first Middle East premiere on the Green Carpet at the 13th Sharjah Intl. Film Festival for Children and Youth in the UAE, where Italy is this year's Country of Honor.
- Filo, the protagonist in the film adapted from an Italian novel of the same name, is a boy in 1998 trying to understand his mother's death, with the story told through flashbacks and the people around him standing in for parts of his inner world.
- Fabrizio Cattani had already presented the film at the Locarno Film Festival and said he wanted to test how young Middle Eastern audiences would respond; after the Sharjah screening, children came up to thank him, congratulate him and say how excited they were.
- Calabria's forests act as a character in a film shot there in the autumn, while Cattani cites Vittorio De Sica's "Bicycle Thieves" as an "absolute masterpiece" and stresses the film's distinctly Italian setting, dialects and locally rooted elements.
- Fabrizio Cattani said festivals such as SIFF could bridge the Italian and Arab film industries and eventually extend to production and financing, at a time when he says independent filmmaking in Italy faces increasing financial pressure.
- Fabrizio Cattani's next film returns to an adult protagonist and is set around the marble quarries of Carrara in Tuscany, following the "medico condotto" village doctors whose role disappeared after changes to Italy's health system.
- Young Rebels, another Cattani project, is based on the true story of young scouts who defied a fascist ban on Catholic associations and helped thousands targeted by the regime escape across the mountains into Switzerland.
Why it matters: At the 13th Sharjah festival, where Italy is Country of Honor, young viewers in the UAE came up to Cattani after the screening to say they had been excited by the film. He says bridges like SIFF can extend beyond cultural exchange into production and financing for Italian independent filmmakers facing increasing financial pressure.
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