AUGUSTA – On the evening of May 16th, at the “Luigi Pirandello” Theater in Agrigentothe national premiere of will be held Finding Marta. A film about Pirandello’s Museby the Augustan director Lorenzo Danielewith the screenplay by Alessandra Ciliohis life partner.
The documentary film it is produced by the Augustan “Fine artprodotti srl”, with the support of the Sicilian Region – Sicilia film commission. The special event, organized with the collaboration of the Dmo (acronym for Destination management operation) “Valle dei Templi” tourist district and the “Teatro Luigi Pirandello” Foundation, will see the participation of the director, the leading actress Margherita Peluso and the film’s artistic crew who will introduce the screening with a talk moderated by Marco Gallo, artistic director of Sicilymovie – Agrigento Film Festival.
The film traces the life of Marta Abba, actress of Milanese origins, born in 1900, who in 1925 came into contact with the then already famous Agrigento playwright Luigi Pirandello who appreciated Marta’s great artistic talent, but also her extraordinary beauty. Thus began a professional relationship between the two, an artistic partnership, which would end at the end of 1936, with the death of the Nobel Prize winner.
In over a decade, Marta Abba and her “Master” will exchange more than eight hundred letterspreserved partly in Rome, at the Institute of Pirandello Studies, partly at the library of Princeton University, in New Jersey, to which the actress, now eighty years old, donated all the correspondence, revealing the tormented relationship to the world with Pirandello.
“The film is not a classic biopic – underlines director Lorenzo Daniel – it is a work of creation in which they are mixed three narrative levels: that of the protagonist, a modern-day actress, Margherita Peluso; that of Marta Abba; that of the experts who succeed one another and who, with their testimony, help the public to understand the true essence of Marta, dispelling that cliché according to which she was Pirandello’s lover. This film is an attempt to give voice to the woman who played a fundamental role in the great playwright’s theatrical production. And at the same time she wants to shine the spotlight on a stubborn and in some ways rebellious woman who inaugurated, together with her mentor, a renewed theatre, different from the stereotypes of the time. An actress who founded her own company, and was probably the first woman to do so in Europe, facing head on the world of men, who in that historical period occupied the positions of power and prestige”.
Various people intervene within the film, which has a duration of 72 minutes expertseach with their own skills: Annamaria Andreoli(president of the Institute of Pirandello Studies in Rome) e Pietro Frassica (professor of Italian literature at Princeton University) are among the leading experts who have studied the correspondence between Abba and Pirandello since the mid-1980s; David J. Diamond he is an actor coach of “La MaMa theatre” in New York who will accompany Margherita’s research with his advice; the Sicilian actress Lucia Sardoa well-known face in cinema, who will address the delicate topic of the relationship between Marta Abba and the world of theater contemporary to her.
“The Municipality of Agrigento and the Valley of the Temples tourist district – he claims Fabrizio La Gaipadirector of the Dmo – “Valley of the Temples” tourist district – followed the filming of the film in 2023, when the crew filmed in the city, on the very day Agrigento was elected Italian capital of culture 2025. We could not fail to accept the director’s and production’s proposal to launch the docufilm in Luigi Pirandello’s hometown, offering logistical support to the important event, with the hope that this documentary can travel the world and be a promotional tool to enhance the Agrigento territory”.
The making of the documentary film lasted almost two yearsincluding bibliographic research, text writing, inspections, shooting and editing, with an industrial cost of approximately 95 thousand euros, being a low budget film. The filming locations were Sicily, Rome and the United States. In addition to the Milanese actress Margherita Peluso, the Australian director appears in the film Laurence Strangio and the Augustan actors Davide Sbrogiò And Mauro Italy.
After the preview in Agrigento, the film will find space in many festival national and international, and will also enjoy diffusion in cinema halls with targeted events. Finally it will be placed inside platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The Production does not exclude the possibility of television broadcasting.
