42° TORINO FILM FESTIVAL
INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARIES COMPETITION
IL MESTIERE DI VIVERE
by Giovanna Gagliardo
Country: Italy
Year: 2024
Duration: 90'
The documentary begins at the end: that is, on the weekend of August 26th/27th, 1950. It’s the last, frantic day of Cesare Pavese’s life. He wanders through the deserted city, searches for friends he cannot find, writes, makes phone calls. On Sunday evening, he ends his life. This epilogue serves as the premise for telling another story. The story of a man, a writer, an intellectual who, in his short life, managed to create a new literary and cultural world that shaped the second half of the 20th century in Italy.
Biography
film director
Giovanna Gagliardo
(Monticello d’Alba, 1941) approached cinema as a screenwriter and assistant director for the great Hungarian filmmaker Miklós Jancsó, collaborating on titles such as The Pacifist (1970), Technique and Rite (1972), Rome Wants Another Caesar (1974), and Private Vices, Public Virtues (1976). She made her directorial debut in 1978 with Mother and Daughter, a psychological and symbolic exploration of the mother-daughter relationship, followed in 1983 by the noir Via degli specchi. In 1991, she directed Suffocating Heat, set in the sweltering Rome of the 1990 World Cup, which inaugurated the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at Cannes. From the 1990s onwards, she brilliantly dedicated herself to documentary filmmaking, and after Viva l’Italia (1995) and Che colpa abbiamo noi (1997), she returned to female themes with Bellissime (2004), a history of 20th-century Italy reconstructed through a wide gallery of women. Since 2007, she has worked for the Istituto Luce, using archival materials to reconstruct the history of Italian fashion and costume up to the 1960s with L’abito di domani – Storia della moda nel tempo (2009). After other documentaries exploring both historical narratives and the complexities of the present, in 2024 she pays tribute to Cesare Pavese with The Stressful Art of Living.
FILMOGRAFIA
Maternale (TV, 1978), Il sogno dell’altro (TV, 1981), Via degli specchi (1983), Caldo soffocante (1991), Il mito di Cinecittà (mm, 1991), Il riso e il pianto (1992), Viva l’Italia (1995), Che colpa abbiamo noi (1997), Bellissime (2204), Bellissime 2 (2006), L’abito di domani – Storia della moda nel tempo (2009), Vittime – Gli «Anni di piombo» (2009), 20 anni (2012), Le romane (2016), Il mare della nostra storia (2018), Good Morning Tel Aviv (2023), Il mestiere di vivere (2024).
Declaration
film director
“I came across Pavese during my adolescence in Turin and beyond. Of course, I loved him; I read him. I memorized many of his poems. I placed him among the memories of that fruitful past spent in the irreplaceable Turin of the sixties. Rediscovering and rereading him today, after so many years, has been a true revelation for me. When you pick up his novels, his poems, especially his diaries, you understand from the very first lines that he is speaking to you about the ‘present.’ Not his present, but ‘ours.’ He stages the complexity of events and makes you realize that there is no escape. He forces you not to seek simple answers and blocks your path if you try to take sides. He tests you.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR, SCREENPLAY: Giovanna Gagliardo, CINEMATOGRAPHY: Roberta Allegrini. EDITING: Emanuelle Cedrangolo. PRODUCTION: Luce Cinecittà
CONTACT: Cinecittà Luce (Alessio Massatani) a.massatani@cinecitta.it
