Let’s find out Alessio Cremonini who, after having achieved notoriety with On my skin, returns to the cinema on January 26 with the new film Prophets.
How nice is it to be able to say that Alessio Cremonini is an Italian director? Oh God, the starting point should be to understand how important it is to have a director of a certain type belonging to the world of cinema in our country. So when we find ourselves in front of a film like the one that is the subject of today’s study, it is right to applaud whoever made this film, as much as whoever distributed the title in Italy. The title in question is Prophetscreated precisely by Alessio Cremonini and which can boast the participation of Jasmine Trinca, who will see her appearance in the hall starting from the next January 26th thanks LuckyRed.
Who is Alessio Cremonini
Born in 1973, Alessio Cremonini is one of the “new” names in Italian cinema.
For more than twenty years now, his name has been moving within the diaries and panorama of the Italian audiovisual sector. The entrance is of noble heritage thanks to his collaboration as Ettore Scola’s assistant in La Cena, the beginning of a long apprenticeship that lasted more than a decade. He spends quite some time in fact before seeing him debut with a personal project behind the camera. We are in 2013 when Cremonini directs and co-produces his first feature film as a director with Border. The film, presented out of competition at the Rome Film Festival, retraces the lives and experiences of refugees through the true story of two sisters in Syria in 2012 who, to seek peace from internal turmoil, travel through the woods which will lead them to the border with Turkey. An extremely sober film that immediately presents Cremonini as a director attentive to current events and to the great respect, devoid of exploitation, of the subjects of his works and of his thoughts. At the same time presenting a sensitivity that does not detach from the work but rather merges with it in order to give color and warmth to the story. All characteristics that will then present themselves in the director’s subsequent works.
On my skin and success
A few years pass and the leap in notoriety and in the Italian collective imagination arrives. We are in 2018 and, thanks to the collaboration between Cinemaundici, Lucky Red and Netflix and the work of Cremonini, On my skin, the film on the case of Stefano Cucchi, comes to life. A wound that never healed in Italy and the Italians, staged with verist rigor and in full compliance with the facts and judicial documents. Thanks to the capillarity of film distribution mixed with that in streaming guaranteed by the popularity of Netflix, On My Skin marks a “before and after” for Italian cinema. The film, on one of the news stories of our country, starring Alessandro Borghi as the protagonist enters the cinemas, homes and school cinemas of Italy, going to break through and influence our collective memory. Without pietism or Christological morality, On My Skin manages to tell the Cucchi case in such a way as to become a common memorial document for the whole of our country, they become a work of costume and of monumental historical and social influence for Italy. The film was first presented as the opening film in the Horizons section at the 2018 Venice Film Festival, and then became one of the protagonists at the David di Donatello 2019 where it will win various awards including Best New Director for Alessio Cremonini and Best Actor protagonist for Alessandro Borghi.
Prophets and the return of Alessio Cremonini
After the deserved success and recognition for Cremonini it took several years to see his new work behind the camera. It is Profeti, a story of confrontation and clash between Sara, an Italian journalist kidnapped by Isis during a war report in Syria, and Nur, a young foreign fighter wife of a militiaman of the Caliphate who keeps her prisoner in his house built in a training camp. The film, in addition to re-proposing the collaboration between Jasmine Trinca and Cremonini after Sulla mia pelle, represents a further step within the filmography of the Italian director in his journey on the analysis of the role of women within the chronicle of our country and of international dynamics. Yet another demonstration of the talent and sensitivity of a director whose name is too much set aside in Italian cinema and who instead never fails to underline his uniqueness in contemporary world cinematography.
Prophets hits theaters on January 26th distributed by Lucky Red.
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