Italy is the most successful country in the Best International Feature Film Oscar category with 14 wins, and this year it will compete with Familia, directed by Francesco Costabile.
Adapted from writer Luigi Celeste’s memoir, Familia follows Gigi (Francesco Gheghi), a young man who lives with his mother (Barbara Ronchi) and brother (Marco Cicalese). The family is estranged from their violent father, Franco (Francesco Di Leva). Struggling to find an outlet for his anger, Gigi finds companionship with a group of far-right skinheads. When Franco reappears in their lives, Gigi is forced to confront his past and make crucial decisions about his future.
“I found the book after I finished my first film, Una Femmina. That film was also about violence against women. But it was within the context of a mafia family in Calabria,” Costabile said of the film’s origins during a panel for Deadline’s Contenders Film: International, where he appeared alongside the film’s lead actors Gheghi and Ronchi.
“I wanted to find a theme that was more universal because this kind of culture of violence transcends all kinds of social classes,” he added.
Celeste’s memoir was a popular book in Italy. Costabile explained that it was fairly easy to acquire rights to adapt the memoir for the screen because it was Celeste’s “dream of his life” to be depicted in a feature film.
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“He wrote the book while he was in prison, and he wrote it from his point of view to share his story,” Costabile said. “Often in this kind of killing, the story is just summarized in a newspaper in a few lines with no regard for the complexity of a family, with all the psychological tones about what really happened. So this was a way for Luigi to have his story told.”
Ronchi didn’t meet Celeste’s real-life mother while prepping for the role and instead leaned on deep research, including interviews she conducted with victims of domestic abuse. Gheghi told us he spent a significant amount of time getting to know Celeste through phone calls.
“We talked a lot. He expressed to me all his emotions and also all the stories that he had lived through from the book, like when he was in the fascist group,” Gheghi said.
“And it was wonderful when we finally met. It was after three weeks on the set. He arrived, and we looked each other in the eyes and recognized each other. We didn’t need to say anything; we just looked at each other and smiled. We didn’t say anything until the end of that day.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.