Paola Cortellesi still can’t believe the success of her film There’s still tomorrowbox office hit in Italy. The director and actress told BBC News her amazement at the film’s release across Europe: There’s Still Tomorrowthis is the English title, will be distributed by Vue Cinemas in cinemas in the United Kingdom and Ireland from 26 April.
“No one could have ever predicted the wave of public participation and affection for this film. I’ve been an actress for almost 30 years, I’ve been writing screenplays for the last 10 years and now I’ve made my first film as a director at 50. And share the screen and the box office with a huge movie like Barbiewhich also deals with women’s experiences, is a good thing” Cortellesi said during the interview.
The actress and director said her film seeks in part to explore a cultural mentality that has “been going on for millennia.” “The topic of the killing of women is unfortunately very, very current, especially in Italy. But femicide is often the tragic end of something that didn’t start that way. What we don’t know – he added – is the story that culminates in a horrendous act of violence and the death of a woman every 72 hours in Italy. We can only deduce a history of violence that is often not even reported to the authorities before it escalates.”
Cortellesi stated that the theme of violence against women has been part of her screenplays for years, as well as her theatrical and cinematographic work as an actress, although she specifies that she has not experienced it personally. “I wanted to make a contemporary film set in the past to compare what has changed and what has remained the same“, explains the actress to BBC News. “Maybe now, as women, we have some rights and protections, but what has not changed in society is this mentality that distorts love and transforms it into possession. That’s why we need better education“.
“It’s not about comedy per se, but about using the language of comedy to talk about very serious topics,” he added. “I feel that using humor can introduce these topics. We know that people will hopefully empathize and take the side of your heroine, without me being confrontational in my cinematic language“. “This was never intended to be a film against Italian men, but an invitation to share and walk together on the same path of life – he then specified – I didn’t want men to walk away from watching the film and think I was pointing an accusatory finger at them. I think because of the tone of the film and the way all the different characters were portrayed, the men identified with the female characters, and I saw that in the way they reacted throughout the film.”
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Cortellesi then called his 11-year-old daughter his “muse” for the film, which could be described as “a mother-daughter love story.” “The whole project came about because I was reading her a book about women’s rights and my daughter couldn’t believe there was a time when our rights weren’t enshrined in law. So it occurred to me that we needed to talk to the younger generations and make them understand that their rights are not a given. Just because we achieved something, doesn’t mean it will be that way forever. I wanted to, in a way, start passing the baton to a younger generation.”
