Story and Point of view
Southern Italy, the end of summer: the Durati family lives in an isolated house amidst the imposing rocky landscape. Both protected and cut off from everything, they are connected to the outside world by a single road that runs through their olive tree plantation. Today, as they prepare to celebrate the older sister’s impending wedding, time flies in this secluded reality. Dora, Matteo, Renzo and Alice Durati don’t realize this is their last day alive.
The set up is minimalistic: one house, one day, four characters. The members of the family move around the property and we follow them without any real purpose. This is not a story with a beginning and an end. Rather this film will work like a trance. The sustained rhythm doesn’t leave much room for critical distance: we are taken along in the flow from one character to the next as they go from one room to the other, one action to the following. Time sometimes repeats itself, as the perspective changes, but the day goes on. It is the rhythm of everyday life. And bit by bit, the rules and mechanisms that govern the family’s dynamics reveal themselves. The characters become more defined with every scene, their relations materialise on screen and we discover their singularity. Yet little psychology is involved. Ours is a plastic experience. So that it is in their bodies, their pauses, their entire physiognomy and the landscape around them that the emotion of these individual journeys through life materialises. And it is only as an aftermath that we recognise what we were witnessing: our characters died and we have reinvented how they lived.
Process of Work
The film is based on the true murder that occured one night of 1959 in a small town of western Kansas, USA. We relocated the story in southern Italy, in the archaic white rocky landscape of Basilicata - both a violent, yet mesmerizing natural setting. The religious and traditional values that characterize the original protagonists of the event will also find some groundings in this specific southern Italian reality. This context is an essential part of the film. Hence the shooting on location and the need for the core team to spend some time in immersion for the last phase of the writing. The script will also be finalised in close collaboration with non-professional actors coming from the region, to be able to ground the images in the everyday reality of the place.
Pre-production : August 2017 (Basilicata, Italy) // Shooting : 15 shooting days in September 2017 (Basilicata, Italy) with a team of 18 people. // Post-production : October 2017 - February 2018 (Berlin, Germany)
Shooting Format : 2K
Script & Directing Sara Summa // Photography Katharina Schelling // Production Cecilia Trautvetter // Set Design Camille Grangé // Music Ben Roessler // Production Manager Marie Sanchez // Line Producer dffb Andreas Louis
Why we need your backing.
We are a very dedicated and passionate little team, and we want to put all our energy and time into the making of the film. Our film is currently in pre-production and most of the budget for the project is already secured, yet we still need 4000 Euros to complete the financing. Those 4000 Euros are critical for the making of the film. That’s why we set our goal at 4400 Euros (10% go to the WeMakeIt platform) and decided not to offer the usual counterparts. We need to dedicate every cent and all our small team’s energy to the actual production of the film. We are deeply grateful for each contribution, and we will mention your name in the final credits and keep you in the loop throughout the entire making process of the film. And once the film gets premiered in Berlin and Basilicata, you will be invited to join us for the screenings! Thank you very much for helping us make this film!
