32° TORINO FILM FESTIVAL
ONDE

LA SAPIENZA

LA SAPIENZA
by Eugène Green
Country: Italy, France
Year: 2014
Duration: 104'


At the height of his architect career, Alexandre leaves everything and goes to Italy to write a book on Borromini, a project that he had abandoned years ago. His wife Aliénor travels with him, but along the way, she starts realizing how much their relationship has cooled off, just like her husband’s passion for his job. The unexpressed existential void felt by the couple is finally revealed when they meet a couple of young brothers, immersing themselves in the landscape, surrounded by Italian architecture.

Biography

film director

Eugène Green

(New York, USA, 1947) moved to Paris in 1969, where in 1977 he founded the Théâtre de la Sapience, with which he staged various Baroque and modern plays. He made his directorial debut with Toutes les nuits, Prix Delluc for best debut film in 2001. He then directed Le nom du feu, presented in Locarno in 2002 and distributed together with Le monde vivant, which took part in the Directors' Fortinight. With Correspondances he was awarded in 2007, together with Harun Farocki and Pedro Costa, the special jury prize in Locarno, where he returned to competition in 2009 with A Religiosa Portuguesa and in 2014 with La Sapienza, shot between Switzerland and Italy. In 2011 TFF dedicated a retrospective to him and then went on to program several of his films, such as the documentary filmed in the Basque Country Faire la parole (2015), Le fils de Joseph (2016), which premiered at the Berlinale, and the workshop film En attendant les Barbares (2017). In 2020 he returned to the Basque Country to shoot Atarrabi et Mikelats, which was presented in San Sebastian. In addition to his activity as a director, he also works as a writer and poet.

FILMOGRAFIA

Toutes les nuits (2001), Le nom du feu (cm, 2002), Le monde vivant (2003), Le pont des arts (2004), Les signes (mm, 2006), Digital Sam in Sam Saek 2007: Memories (ep. Corrispondences, mm, 2007), A Religiosa Portuguesa (2009), La sapienza (2014), Faire la parole (doc., 2015), Le fils de Joseph (2016), En attendant les Barbares (2017), Como Fernando Pessoa salvou Portugal (cm, 2017), Lisboa revisitada (cm, 2019). Atarrabi et Mikelats (2020), Le mur des morts (2022).

Declaration

film director

“This film has two sources of inspiration. On the one hand the desire to illustrate through film the works and life of the Baroque architect Francesco Borromini. On the other the interest for contemporary architecture and urban planning. The first inspiration would suggest a biography, while both would be very suited to a documentary style narrative. I don’t however believe that one may reconstruct a life through film, despite having all due respect for the documentary as a form of expression, I have always had the instinctive belief – that tends to be sidelined in today’s Europe – that the greater truth can be found in fiction.”

Cast

& Credits

regia, soggetto, sceneggiatura/director, story, screenplay
Eugène Green
fotografia/cinematography
Raphael O’Byrne
montaggio/film editing
Valérie Loiseleux
scenografia/production design
Giorgio Barullo
costumi/costume design
Agnès Noden
suono/sound
Mirko Guerra, Sonia Portoghese
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
Fabrizio Rongione (Alexandre), Christelle Prot Landman (Aliénor), Ludovico Succio (Goffredo), Arianna Nastro (Lavinia), Eugène Green
produttori/producers
Martine De Clermont-Tonnerre, Alessandro Borrelli
produzione/production
Mact Productions, La Sarraz Pictures
contatti/contacts
La Sarraz Pictures
Alessandro Borrelli
Menu