In 1980, Italian author and director Marco Tullio Giordana won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival for his feature film debut Maledetti we loveThis year he is back for the 77th edition of the Swiss festival with Life is here (Life separated). And he’s back to accept another award.

At the premiere of his new film out of competition on Monday afternoon in the picturesque Swiss town, Marco Tullio Giordana was awarded a special leopard “as a tribute to his career,” festival organizers said.

“1980s, an Italian city of art, a wealthy family,” reads a description of the new film on Locarno’s website. “Rebecca is born with a conspicuous red mark on her face, which provokes rejection, cruelty and tortured love in the family. Music will be her refuge.”

Based on the novel of the same name by Maria Pia Veladiano, Giordana wrote the screenplay together with Italian author Marco Bellocchio and Gloria Malatesta. The cast includes Sonia Bergamasco, Paolo Pierobon, Valentina Bellè, Italian pianist Beatrice Barison in her feature film debut, Sara Ciocca and Michela Cescon.

Watch a clip from the film below.

“Locarno is a festival that is very close to my heart because 44 years ago I won the Golden Leopard for my first film and have returned there many times since then,” said Giordana. THR through an interpreter. “It’s a very friendly festival compared to others where there is more of a hectic hustle and bustle with people coming and going. In Locarno you can enjoy films, meet old friends and maybe make new friends too.”

The filmmaker said he has always been fascinated by Italy’s many different towns and villages, with their different cultures and traditions. “I feel like by shooting my films set in different regions of Italy, I’m somehow taking a journey through my own country and discovering my own country,” he said.

The fact that his new film is set in beautiful Vicenza was one of the reasons he was interested in the project. “There was also the intertwining of the family, a theme that I have dealt with in many of my previous films,” he said. “But here the setting and the family environment and background are more restricted, more bourgeois, more exclusive, and that proves that wealth does not necessarily mean happiness and fulfillment.”

Why is family such a recurring theme in Italian films? “In Italy, the family is really a very important element of our culture,” said Giordana THR. “And by that I don’t just mean the small happy family, but all the degeneration that can occur in family bonds and connections.” One of the images shared is that of the Italian mother. “When you talk about family in Italy, you are somehow talking about Italian society. It’s like looking at it through a microscope, through a lens.”

Giordana praised his cast for bringing the new film to life. “I love them. They were all very creative,” he said.

When asked specifically about Barison, he kept gushing, “She’s amazing. I love her.” How did he come to cast her? “I wanted a real piano player to play Rebecca. I didn’t want what you often see in movies, which is an actress and then a pianist for the (close-ups of the) hands on the keyboard. I just wanted to film the live performances. And I looked for an artist at the conservatory in the Veneto region because I wanted the artist to have that real accent (of the region that includes Vicenza). When I saw Beatrice from a distance, I prayed that she would be good because as soon as I saw her, I knew she would be perfect, which she was during the screen tests. She didn’t care about the camera or being filmed. She was just being herself.”

However, there were some challenges for the cast, as he himself faced a challenge, Giordana mentioned. “This is how I work with actors. Before I give them instructions on set, I usually ask them to show me the scenes as they have studied them. Sometimes I take their suggestions and add or change things.”

To Life separatedthere were quite a few changes in the end. “I suffered from insomnia during the shoot,” the filmmaker said. “I couldn’t sleep during the entire shoot, so I spent the whole night rewriting lines and scenes. And the next morning I came up with new lines of dialogue that they could learn in makeup.” While this gave the actors “very little time to get used to the dialogue changes,” “it led to even more natural performances – to the point where they said, ‘What’s the point of studying the roles if you’re going to change everything?’ And I had to say, ‘Maybe we’ll go back to the original plan.'”

How was it working with his friend Bellocchio? “I worked with Marco during the writing phase. When he offered me the film, I naturally felt the need to rewrite part of the script because I wanted to make it more personal. He gave me advice and various suggestions, but never interfered,” said Giordana. THR. “He never asked me to look at the day’s footage or the footage. He saw a rough cut and again gave me advice at that point. And because I ended up finishing early and not wasting any money – in fact, we saved some – I realized in the editing room that I was missing three or four key scenes. And I asked him for permission to reshoot them.”

One example is a scene in which Rebecca, as a ten-year-old, rebels against her mother. “That was something I missed and was absolutely crucial to explaining the guilt she feels afterwards,” explained the filmmaker. “We needed to show this aggressive side of her towards her mother. A more conventional producer, concerned with time and money, might not have allowed me to do that, but Marco understood my need.”

What’s next for Giordana? “Besides filmmaking, I also work in the theater,” he said THR“So my next project will be a theater show that I adapt with the actor who plays the protagonist of the show based on (the novel). The late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello.”

He also has an idea for a new film. “I wrote a film a few years ago that I would like to make, called The Red & Black,” or Red and blacksaid Giordana. “And I have other projects or films, but maybe some of them are now too old and others too grey to be made into films. But what I would like to do is continue to alternate between theater and cinema.”