Nanni Moretti is quite probably Italy’s most prolific (and most heavily awarded) living director – and his style is unmistakable: often casting himself as the lead character in bubbly, semi-autobiographical comedies that are steeped both in an encyclopedic cinephilia (Moretti also famously owning a small arthouse cinema called the Nuovo Sacher) and leftwing political satire. And as any true auteur that conjugates the same number of fixed details into a signature, all of this is also true of his latest film, A Brighter Tomorrow (Il Sol Dell’avvenire), which had its international premiere at last year’s outing of the Cannes Film Festival: which sees Moretti in the role of Giovanni, a director struggling to finish a feature film about how the Italian Communist Party (a topic that he also explored in his 1990 documentary, La Cosa*) supported the popular Hungarian Uprising against the Soviets in 1956 while his producer-wife is both attempting to divorce him, and working on a Netflix film in parallel.

Although one could count it as a spiritual successor of sorts to his 1993 magnum opus Caro Diario (and there is even a wink of sorts towards his famous Vespa), A Brighter Tomorrow isn’t Moretti at his peak artistic level, for sure, but I do find that much of the flack the film has gotten since its release is undeserved. For example, Peter Bradshaw’s vitriolic review in The Guardian is chilling enough to make any prospective spectators flee the cinema – yet, it fails to register the film’s main theme, which, beyond a surface that might be strident at times, is very elegantly executed in its inner layers: that of a filmmaker who is wholly unable to face a world that has changed at every imaginable scale, be it his failing marriage, the failure of the historical left-wing parties or the failure of traditional cinephilia in an increasingly mercantile and anhistorical audiovisual landscape. Also, for what it’s worth, the rambling lecture that protagonist Giovanni gives about the representation of violence starting from the works of Krzysztof Kieslowski probably ranks amongst the best pieces of film analysis of 2023.

We had the chance to attend a roundtable interview with Mr. Moretti last year in Cannes, shortly after the world premiere of his film – and are publishing it now, on the occasion of the film’s wide release in Romanian cinema. (The questions asked by Films in Frame are marked with an asterisk*.)

*

Q: Just a few minutes ago, during the previous interview, you said that cinema is not therapy. But for me, your film really feels like it.

Nanni Moretti: No, no, I said that it’s not therapy for directors. For viewers, maybe, yes, it can be like a form of therapy, that’s true.

Q: But still, we have a story about a director who desperately tries to make a film from the political point of view of his time, and out of his love for cinema. There are a lot of things going on in parallel in the film. Why did you decide to put it all together in one story?

Nanni Moretti: Well, I like a film that is full of things. The fact that I’m a spectator is just as important as the fact that I am a director. My “work” as a spectator has always had a great impact on my “work” as a director. And as a spectator, I go to the cinema because I want to be surprised. To be touched. To laugh. And so this is what I’m trying to do myself, in my work as a director. I’m aware that, with the material that I have in Il Sol Dell’avvenire, other scriptwriters or other directors would have made three separate films. I decided to make only one film, one that would be very rich, but also short, which is always a good thing.

Cinema should not be an end in itself. A film must not only exist for its own sake. Of course, with cinema, I don’t claim to change a spectator’s mind. Whoever makes a film with this desire in mind is already setting themselves on a bad path.

Q: Autobiographical elements are very popular nowadays, in every field of art. In cinema, we’re seeing more and more films that use autobiography as a starting point, but it’s not that often that their directors are also performing themselves. It’s touching to see it, especially when it also contains some self-critique, like in this story. Was it a deliberate choice, this self-critique, this self-reconciliation?

Nanni Moretti: Yes, well, of course, it’s on purpose. Both Giovanni and I are not only uncomfortable with others, but we are also uncomfortable with ourselves. So here lies the self-criticism, the self-deprecation. These have been part of my work from the very beginning. Fifty years or so ago, I made my first short films with Super8, and ever since then, it has come naturally to me. That is, making fun of myself, using self-criticism, using self-irony – all that came naturally to me from the very beginning. And it’s my way of narrating about myself.

There is a connection among all my films because even if it is not so immediately evident, they are all autobiographical. And because I feel the need to urgently tell this one particular story. I don’t like to make films in general, I like to make my film, the film I feel the urge to make.

Q: Giovanni is in a state of crisis. He’s in a crisis in his private life, in his professional life (the film is not going in the direction he expected it to go) – and he doesn’t understand why his wife wants to divorce him, just as he doesn’t understand the rest of the crises that he is facing. What is the origin of all these crises that he is facing? Will he ever see that he is in a crisis, and the reasons why?

Nanni Moretti: But that is perhaps because I, myself, have always been in crisis. Maybe that’s the answer. I was in an existential crisis when I finished high school. I didn’t really know what to do, and yet, confusedly, I felt I could gamble. My parents had nothing to do with filmmaking, they were both teachers. However, darkly, confusedly, I felt attracted to cinema. Could it have solved my crisis? Absolutely not. But with cinema, I could throw out of myself what I had an urgency to communicate to others, and maybe even to myself.

Q*: Relating to the earlier question – there is this interesting scene at the beginning of the film, where Giovanni gathers his wife and his daughter to watch Jacques Demy’s Lola. It’s a very nice device that you use to introduce Handel’s Sarabande, a song with an enormous history in cinema. My question would be – why is Lola, in particular, the film that he returns to before every shooting?

Nani Moretti: I chose Lola because I wanted to show an excerpt from a film that I loved very much, and yet, I didn’t want to pick one that was very well-known, like the ones of Fellini, Lubitsch, or Chaplin. Why a film from the 1960s? It’s an era of cinema to which I am very attached, first as a spectator, and then, as a consequence, as a filmmaker.

Q: The 1956 Revolution is a very important event in the history of Hungary. What did this event mean to you? Do you have any memories of it as a child?

Nanni Moretti: No. I was three years old. I was interested in it because it was a chance for a huge change for the Western left. An opportunity that was missed. An opportunity for it to become an adult left-wing movement, but it was completely missed.

I must add that, in short, it is easy to talk about it now that we are in 2023. In those years, the world was divided into two blocs. I understand that it was difficult for the Italian Communist Party, and by extension, for the entire Western left, to distance itself from the Soviet Union.

Q: What compelled you to create the plot point regarding the Hungarian circus? Was it pure fantasy, or was it rooted in historical fact or even personal experience?

Nanni Moretti: It was pure fantasy. While writing the film, we wanted to have an image of the Hungarian people who were in Italy at the outburst of the crisis in Hungary. And so we thought of the circus, and we used Hungarian actors for the roles. Whereas other directors would have perhaps chosen indistinctive actors from the East, we purposefully chose to work with ones from Hungary.

Q*: I would like to ask about the scene where Giovanni interrupts the shooting of the other film to make a superb demonstration starting from Kieślowski’s Short Film about Killing. Here, you can feel that his ethos is that of cinephilia, that this is his guiding light – in contrast to Netflix-type productions. How do you relate to this self-reflexive idea of cinephilia, to its role in cultivating a critical position towards cinema and functioning of the world at large, of it as an antidote to a lot of very mercantile, cheap, mass-produced images?

Nanni Moretti: In short, to make cinema in a free manner, which is the one that I do, is a craft. And then, on the other hand, those who work with platforms, well… in brief, it’s another way of working and also of consuming films for the viewer.

Q: The film is full of life, full of joy, full of love of cinema. How do you stay optimistic? And do you think it’s a political statement to stay optimistic?

Nani Moretti: You know, it’s a declaration of love toward cinema, and it’s also a declaration of trust toward the audience, as well. This may seem like a difficult film, but in my opinion, it is not. By making unconventional films, I am also making a declaration of trust towards the audience, since I still believe that there can still be an audience for these films. So far, the bet has been won, because in Italy the film is doing very well.

Q*: But what about the left? Are you optimistic about it?

Nanni Moretti: As far as the left is concerned, as you may know, the Italian government is currently run by the right wing, and I think that a few years of being in opposition will do good for the Italian left. And I think it will be able to rediscover at least part of the identity that has been lost over the years.

“A Brighter Tomorrow” will be released in Romanian cinemas at the beginning of February. “La Cosa” will screen in Bucharest as part of the line-up of Il Cinema Ritrovato On Tour on the 17th of February.

Flavia Dima

Film critic & journalist. Collaborates with local and international outlets, programs a short film festival - BIEFF, does occasional moderating gigs and is working on a PhD thesis about home movies. At Films in Frame, she writes the monthly editorial - The State of Cinema and is the magazine's main festival reporter.