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Veteran auteur Nanni Moretti – who has had nine movies in competition at Cannes — is back in Venice after 37 years with “It Will Happen Tonight,” a romantic drama toplining French star Louis Garrel and Italian A-lister
Jasmine Trinca (“La Storia,” “Supersex”).
“Years ago I had coined this slightly stupid phrase that I used to say at press conferences: ‘I want to keep making the same film; but possibly make it more beautiful each time,'” Moretti said, after being greeted warmly at the film’s presser. Then, as time progressed, the director said he decided he wanted to try new things. This time, with his screenwriters, Valia Santella and Federica Pontremoli, “we imagined a pretty powerful love story,” Moretti said.
Romance, in terms of genre, is a first for the idiosyncratic director who has often constructed his films around his own persona, appearing as the central character. Starting with his 1976 Super-8 debut “Io Sono un’Autarchico” and its follow-up, “Ecce Bombo,” which humorously captured the discontent gripping Italy in the bleak 1970s, and, of course, the autobiografical “Caro Diario,” 1994, which marked his international breakthrough. Moretti subsequent standout works comprise his 2001 Palm d’Or winning bereavement drama “The Son’s Room,” the scathing 2006 Silvio Berlusconi satire “The Caiman” and “We Have a Pope” in which he depicted a Pontiff’s crisis of faith.
“It Will Happen Tonight” is loosely based on the short story collection “Hungry Heart” (Lev Raev) by Israeli writer Eshkol Nevo. Moretti, in his director’s statement, called them “Stories about love, encounters and partings. But also about parents and their grown-up children. And all those bonds that accompany us – more or less quietly – throughout our lives.”
The film reunites Moretti with Trinca who made her acting debut in “The Son’s Room” in 2001, when Trinca was 18, and subsequently appeared in the “The Caiman.”
“It’s been hugely emotional to be back working with him,” said Trinca, who was on the Cannes jury in 2023. “Nanni is the person who forged my idea of cinema. Which is not about being in front of camera with an affectation or a pose.”
“It Will Happen Tonight” instead marks Moretti’s first collaboration with Garrel, who starred in French blockbusters “The Three Musketeers” parts 1 and 2 and will soon be seen alongside Sydney Sweeney in Studiocanal’s “Custom of the Country.”
Garrel humorously recounted what he called “the Moretti [acting] method.” For a scene in which the actor had to play basketball, Garrel arrived on set and found the director on the court. Moretti picked up the ball, shot a perfect hoop on his first shot, as cameras were rolling, and told Garrel: “This is what I want you to do,” the actor recounted. “Twenty-five takes later – when I had failed to put the ball through the basket – he sadistically told the crew: “Can I see the shot I took?”
The film’s cast also comprises Angela Finocchiaro, Elena Lietti, Antonio De Matteo, Andrea Lattanzi, Hippolyte Girardot, Pietro Ragusa, and Paolo Sassanelli.
Moretti most recently competed in Cannes in 2023 with high-concept meta-comedy “A Brighter Tomorrow,” in which he stars as a Roman director who is shooting a period piece set in Rome in 1956.
Sacher Film and Fandango produced “It Will Happen Tonight” in collaboration with RAI Cinema.
Paris-based Playtime and French distributor and producer Pan-Européenne, which are handling sales, havepresold “It Will Happen Tonight” widelyahead of its festival bow.
