Edoardo De Angelis’ Comandante, the film starring Pierfrancesco Favino that opens the Venice Film Festival tonight, is set in the Atlantic Ocean. But the film’s great protagonist is Puglia, albeit behind the scenes. The submarine Cappellini, its backdrop to be more precise, has been rebuilt life-size in the military port of Taranto by the production led by Pierpaolo Verga, Nicola Giuliano, Attilio De Razza and De Angelis himself, with a budget of about 15 million, in collaboration with the Italian Military Navy, Cinecittà and Fincantieri. Draggable even in the middle of the sea, the submarine was built in eight months thanks to the skill of engineers, builders and craftsmen who, led by set designer Carmine Guarino, forged 73 tons of steel for a 73-meter-long hull complete with a launching that took place in Taranto at the Navy’s Ferrati dock. The commitment of the Apulia Film Commission made it possible, which, thanks to the services it can convey, is the driving force behind the boom in films and TV series set in the region, also considered one of the secrets of the enormous growth in tourism.
Cappellini – whose interiors were instead reconstructed in Cinecittà – also has a digital model created for underwater dive scenes. New-generation digital visual effects curated by Kevin Tod Haug were also used for the first time to make Comandante, allowing a kind of real-time post-production, which enabled the director to see already on the set an almost final composition of the scenes with a virtual background that transforms the port of Taranto into the Atlantic Ocean.
