Country: Italy
Year: 2025
Duration: 95'
Giancarlo Mangiapane is thirty years old; he has just one dream: to become a great actor. But since the important roles don’t arrive, Giancarlo ends up performing in his everyday life. But one day, his agent tells him that he has the opportunity of a lifetime for him: an audition to star in Clochard, a biopic about the life of Gustavo Noradin, a tap-dancing champion of the 1950s who fell into disgrace because of his dependencies. When Giancarlo discovers that his flat-mat is also preparing for the same role, a rivalry is sparked that ends up obsessing him. Between exhausting rehearsals, a mother who keeps trying to contact him, and a terrible casting director, Giancarlo’s identification with the character becomes total, to the point that his own true identity is put at risk.
Biography
film director
Fabrizio Benvenuto
(Corigliano Calabro, 1992) after finishing high school, enrolled at IULM University in Milan, where he decided to become a film director. He graduated from the Rome University of Fine Arts and in 2015 co-directed his first short, Il miracolo, presented at the Rome Film Fest in the section Alice nella Città. Selected for other national and international festivals, the movie received a special mention at the Nastri d’Argento. In 2018, he directed Happy Hour, selected in Italy and the United States; in 2020, he created the TV series The Rule of the Game (produced in 2024) and in 2022 he co-authored the series Chill House, which won the Premio Solinas Experimenta Serie. Il protagonista is his first feature film.
FILMOGRAFIA
Il miracolo (coregia Serena Aragona, Honglei Bao, Luca Cenname, Michele Leonardi, Alberto Mangiapane, Domenico Modafferi, Alain Parroni, Maria Giovanna Pastorino, Mario Vitale, Piero Messina, cm, 2015), Happy Hour (cm, 2018), Il dio della felicità (cm, 2019), Il protagonista (2025).
Declaration
film director
“This movie comes from a deep desire to create a work that can be a traveling companion for anyone who is following a dream. And, in following it, loses the primordial spark that generated it. I know what it means to dream, fall, get back up, and crash again: it is a rocky path made of enthusiasm and disappointment, strength and insecurity. You can only accept it. Il protagonista doesn’t denounce any failure in the system; it limits itself to showing with surreal authenticity the life of people who need to filter their own emotions through a means, a mask, something that isn’t us.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR, SCREENWRITER: Fabrizio Benvenuto. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Sebastian Bonolis. EDITING: Stefano Mattacchione. PRODUCTION DESIGN: Andrea Montani. COSTUME DESIGN: Beatrice Giannini. MUSIC: Antonio Magliarella. CAST: Pierluigi Gigante, Alessio Lapice, Morena Gentile, Adriano Giannini, Elisabetta Ventura, Anna Redi, Ermanno De Biagi, Pierfrancesco Nacca, Josafat Vagni, Matteo Amaturo. PRODUCTION: Morena Gentile for MG Production.
CONTATCT: MG Production amministrazione@mgproduction.net
