Q&A with Giovanni Tortorici
Rising Italian director Giovanni Tortorici makes films of an autobiographical bent. He worked as an assistant director trainee on Luca Guadagnino’s We Are Who We Are (2020) and as an assistant director on Bones and All (2022). His experience on these projects, combined with his love of stylistically brash filmmakers like Sam Peckinpah and Takashi Miike, motivated him to write and direct Diciannove, a brazenly honest portrait of a confused 19-year-old inspired by his own wayward college experience.
Diciannove is now in theaters across the country.
Q. Diciannove concerns a student of literature, reflecting your own studies and love for the art. It’s clear you are extremely well-read and I’m curious if literature has influenced your approach to filmmaking?
A. I have been deeply in love with literature since I was 17 years old and, as you can see in the movie, with a certain kind of literature. I love the theater of Carlo Goldoni and when I started writing, I was deeply influenced by him and the realism of his dialogue, of the situations, the psychology. I think that still lives in me. In general, I think a big part of me has been informed by literature.
Q. You’ve expressed an interest in expressive and violent filmmakers like Kinji Fukasaku, Takashi Miike, Sam Peckinpah, and Marco Ferreri. What motivates this interest and how has it shaped your visual language?
A. When I was watching these movies, I felt something different than with more classical movies. I was deeply touched by the editing, the writing, and the movement of the camera. I began to understand that different cinematic languages struck different chords in me.
So, when I was filming, it felt natural to replicate certain things that I was seeing and loving in these movies. I was thinking about the language of cinema and much like when I was studying literature, I became very, very focused on language. At a certain point, I understood that cinema had its own language. I remember watching Dario Argento’s Suspiria, for example, and being hit by his language. From then on, I started looking for language everywhere in cinema.
Q. Diciannove is a film about youth, and you’ve stated that your next film is about the misadventures of 16 year-olds in Palermo. What is it about this period in life that interests you as a filmmaker?
A. I’ve been influenced a lot by Giacomo Leopardi, who’s a very famous 19th Century writer. All of his work is about his life. He said something like, “Only when writers are talking about themselves can they become good writers.” And I noticed that when I wrote about things that I had experienced, I preferred that writing.
My first idea, when I was thinking about writing a screenplay, was to write a story that I had experienced. I thought about my past and my attention was attracted to when I was 19 years old. I thought it was a very strange period. It was even a challenge to describe that kind of lifestyle because not a lot of big things happen when you’re 19. That period is all about intimacy and solitude.
I think my next project is a reaction against my first movie. Diciannove was very much about studying and literature, but when I was 16 years old my lifestyle was very different. It was about social life, drugs, violence, dealing with authorities, school, family, police. Since Diciannove was all about solitude and this was so different, I became attracted to this other period in my life.
Q. What’s a happy creative accident you’ve had on set?
A. Good creative accidents happen when I’m filming random people in the street. I like to shoot them because it’s beautiful when you capture someone, not an extra, and it fits with the movie.
Q. What’s a project you’d like to make someday, however impossible it might seem now?
A. I would love to do a kind of popcorn action movie. A lot of my influences are from genre movies. As I told you before: Poliziotteschi; Italian ‘70s horror films; Hong Kong films from the ‘90s, ‘80s, ‘70s, and ‘60s; action movies; Kung fu movies. I’d love to explore that kind of cinema and not do something personal.
Q. What is the last film you saw and loved?
A. The last movie that I saw that I deeply, deeply loved was Louis Malle’s Le souffle au cœur (1971).
Q. What is one way in which you’d like to see the film industry change?
A. I would like to see a more light process when it comes to filmmaking. Sometimes it’s a little bit slow, you know, with all the machinery and 35mm. Sometimes I just have the desire to shoot with a cell phone because it’s so fast. And, I would love a big return to theatrical viewing. Nowadays, with streaming, it’s way easier to watch movies at home, but, like a lot of directors, I have this romantic idea about theaters.
Q. What image would you like to end this interview with?
A. Every time I’m asked about a movie or an image, my mind gives me the images of Ichi the Killer by Takashi Miike. I think it’s lodged in my subconscious.
