Nominated for Director of Best Film, a very nice man from Rome that I was lucky enough to interview a few weeks ago in New York: Daniele Luchetti, director of Anni Felici (Those Happy Years).
The thing that has always impressed me most about director Daniele Luchetti is no longer a mystery to me, and was explained by Luchetti himself when I interviewed him this month for Open Roads, New Italian Cinema. He gets more emotion out of actors than anybody else, and after talking to him, it’s clear that this is no accident.
All you need do is watch Elio Germano sobbing at his wife’s funeral in La Nostra Vita (Our Life), a distraught Angela Finocchiaro in Mio Fratello è Figlio Unico, or Micaela Ramazzotti’s seashore meltdown in the Nastro D’Argento nominated Anni Felici and you’ll agree with me. The emotion in these scenes are career defining for the actors and I always wondered, “How does Luchetti do it?”
The answer is at least partially in Luchetti’s modern approach to directing; Luchetti says that while the old school directors had an almost antagonistic relationship with their actors, he decided that he wanted to really know the actors and what they embodied as human beings.
If it’s the personal relationship with an actor that pulls these amazing performances from them, then keep at it, Daniele! I don’t know if he can beat out Virzì for the Nastro D’Argento, this is a competitive year, but he deserves some kind of award, not just for this film, but for his career as a director.
READ MY INTERVIEW WITH DANIELE LUCHETTI
Anni Felici, an autobiographical hearbreaker, has just been released on Italian DVD with English subtitles. Luchetti told me that he’d been telling everyone else’s stories and decided it was time to tell his own.
Get to know Luchetti with films that are more readily available in the US from Netflix:
Mio Fratello è Figlio Unico – My Brother is an Only Child
and:
Dillo Con Parole Mie – Ginger and Cinnamon
Netflix will let you “SAVE” Anni Felici (Save it now so they’ll be encouraged to actually do it):
Anni Felici – Those Happy Years
and:
I Love Italian Everything 