I found an interview with 22-year-old Sicilian Filippo Pucillo, an actor who is fairly unknown in America but Americans have seen in movies like Respiro, with Valeria Golino and Nuovomondo (The Golden Door). In Nuovomondo, at only 15, Pucillo played Pietro Mancuso, the protagonist Salvatore Mancuso’s mute son who comes reluctantly to America with his family from Sicily.
From Lampedusa, Sicily, an island that is part of Sicily but closer to Tunisia, Pucillo must have impressed the director of Nuovomondo, Emanuele Crialese, because he’s starring in his new film, Terraferma, set to premier at this years’s Venice Film Festival. Terraferma is the story of Sicilian fishermen dealing with illegal immigration and also stars Donatella Finocchiaro.
Here, from mymovies.it, is an interview with Pucillo, which I’ll do my best to translate.
There is no movie theater in Lampedusa unless you count the outdoor screen in Piazza Castello for the third edition of the “Vento del Nord”, the film festival on the island and for the island that’s organized by Massimo Ciavarro with Laura Delli Colli. It’s an event that, like this year, for a difficult tourist season because of bad publicity about the refugee boat people from North Africa, the event has brought a breath of fresh air to Lampedusa. “O’scia”, as they say on the island. (Can somebody translate “o’scia” for me?).
Nevertheless Lampedusa knows cinema well, It’s the silent and powerful protagonist of many films, one in particular, Emanuele Crialese’s Respiro with Valeria Golino and a very young Filippo Pucillo that today, 10 years after and after a part in Nuovomondo, is again playing in a film by Crialese that was made last summer in Linosa, Terraferma (Lampedusa), and will be in competition at the Venice Film Festival.
“I’m the only one from the cast that hasn’t seen the film, but everyone has said that it is very emotional”, said Pucillo, on the shore of the Turkish Sea at Cala Croce. It’s his sea; he was born ad where he grew up on Lampedusa. “I’ll see the film for the first time at Venice and I’m already excited, even if I’m very critical of myself. But I saw the trailer and it made me feel better; with a director like Emanuele I don’t have to be afraid. He’s like a father to me.”
Today Filippo is 22 years old with curly blond hair that’s been bleached from the sun. He’s wearing dark glasses to protect his light eyes, a bracelet with the name “Obama” on his wrist, and a sweater with “Terraferma. Linosa 2010” written on it.
“When Emanuele proposed this new role I didn’t feel that I could handle it, but he (Crialese) said that he had faith in me and that I could be myself. There were four intense months and at times my head was spinning and I was so nervous that I couldn’t eat. It was hard for everybody, because the weather made a few problems.”
In the film, at the side of Donatella Finocchiaro, Beppe Fiorello and Mimmo Culticchio, Filippo Pucillo is appears as part of a Sicilian fishing family whose life becomes overwhelmed from the drama of the illegal immigrants and of the new rules of turning them away, which is against the rules of the sea and the obligation to help anyone in difficulty. It’s a real conflict in Lampedusa just a short distance from Linosa in which Terraferma was shot.
“This winter I was at Lampedusa during the crisis of the illegal immigration and I was surprised to see what we had filmed for pretend becoming a reality. All of the island wants to help these people, we have affection for them like they were our own people. We’ve given them food and clothing and let them use our showers. The tension of the island is against the state which we’ve lost respect for, and not with the immigrants. I’ve become friends with many of them. I speak with them, listen to their dreams of going to France, and I saw their departure and it was sad. Today, however, it is much more calm.”
Filippo would like to see less police and more tourists at Lampedusa, because tourism keeps the island alive and in part, him too, because working as an actor, for Filippo, came by chance when he met Emanuele Crialese there. With the explosion of applause after the showing of the film, Nuovomondo, at Venice and the faith that Crialese has put in him, Pucillo has begun to believe in himself.
“Until now, work was more fun that it was work. I like it. But now I am starting to take it more seriously. Emanuele has given me this chance and I want to make the most of it. After Venice I want to study diction, and then, if things go well, great. I’ll be happy either way, because three films with Emanuele are more than I could imagine.”
In the meantime, waiting for Venice, the next stop is Rome, where a Dolce&Gabbana suit for the red carpet is waiting for him. For a non-professional actor, that’s not bad.
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