Those who have done the math assure that the budget of the Italian productions filling Lido theatres this year will touch 150 million euros. Possible? The most attentive reporters have no doubts: the six films in competition figures have a cumulative declared budget of about 85 million: 28 for Finalmente l’alba by Saverio Costanzo, 15 for Edoardo de Angelis’ Comandante, 12 Stefano Sollima’s Adagio, 11,5 for Matteo Garrone’s Io capitano, 8 for Enea by Pietro Castellitto and 7 for Lubo by Giorgio Diritti.
Does Italian cinema mark a turnaround by betting on the equation that more investment would make the risk less high? It’s possible. And the director of the Mostra, Alberto Barbera, is not surprised. Commenting on the numbers, he endorses the thesis of a rethink that the trend of Italian production is aligning to more international standards. Is this the consequence of the business model for TV series that are getting stronger on the global market? A bounce back from micro-productions struggling to cross national borders? And what if this is also related to the increasingly significant entry of international capital in the production companies that produced the Italian films of this new season?
Barbera also mentioned it: the Italian film industry accustomed us to a low-medium financial production level with obvious spillover limits to the domestic market. But the new generation of producers is more willing to take risks and, above all, more open to bonding in a system of joint ventures marking a turning point. In the new lever, productions are increasingly more robust in movies and large-scale seriality. It is no coincidence that Lorenzo Mieli with The Apartment or Mario Gianani with Wildside, Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima and Carlotta Calori from Indigo are among these new producers ready to invest big, sometimes even together, to lower the risk of making movies just for the Italian market. This year’s Venice Film Festival shows that Italian production has finally found the courage to invest and risk more. Even in the adventure of a submarine that no one would have imagined would plunge into Venezia 80 opening night.
