Based on Franco Vegliani's epic, World War-spanning novel, Franco Giraldi's new film La frontiera (The Border) has attracted acting luminaries Giancarlo Giannini (Fassbinder's Lili Marlene and Coppola's segment in New York Stories) and Omero Antonutti (Rossellini's Italia anno uno, Saura's El Dorado and the Taviani brothers' Good Morning Babylon). Playing, respectively, the Austro-Hungarian officer Von Zirkenitz and the wise old Simeone, Giannini and Antonutti are cast as the on-screen elders of the film's co-stars, Raoul Bova (La lupa) and Marco Leonardi (Italiani).
Bova plays Emidio Orlich, a dashing young officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, who deserts his own ranks to join the Tsar's troops in the winter of 1916. Cutting to summer 1941, Leonardi is Franco Velich, a young Italian officer returning to his home island of Dalmatia, now occupied by Italian troops. From the old, disillusioned Simeone he hears the story of fellow-Dalmatian Emidio, whose adventures the audience re-lives through flashbacks. Back in the present, Franco is torn between his loyalty to the Italian army and the knowledge that Emidio's teenage niece is a burgeoning member of the clandestine anti-Italian resistance.
Giraldi, who lives in Rome but was born in Slovenia with a Slav mother and an Italian father, identified strongly with his protagonists' identity crises. 'From time to time history imposes upon people a border, a single identity. This is always painful and sometimes tragic,' explains the director of 1979's La giacca verde and 1976's Un anno di scuola.
Shot over winter and spring 1995-96, La frontiera is a co-production between Rome's Filmalpha and Factory. Additional funding came from the RAI radio/television web, the European Script Fund and the EC's Media Programme. Adam Minns
Prod co: Filmalpha Srl, Factory Srl
Prod: Marco Gallo, Enzo Giulioli, Mariella Li Sacchi
Dir/scr: Franco Giraldi
Ph: Cristiano Pogany
Prod des: Antonino Formica
Cos: Rossana Romanini
Mus: Luis Bacalov
Ed: Antonio Siciliano
Cast: Raoul Bova, Marco Leonardi, Omero Antonutti
Running time: 107 mins
Int sales: Sacis
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