US-based Iranian auteur Amir Naderi, who is a Venice fest aficionado, will shoot his first feature in Italian, titled ‘Mountain’, set in a semi-abandoned village at the foothills of an Alpine peak.
It follows his Japan-set ‘The Cut’, and ‘Vegas: Based on a True Story’, in competition on the Lido in 2008, Variety reported.
‘The Cut’, a homage to yakuza (crime syndicates) movies, opened the fest’s Horizons section in 2011. Naderi was also in Venice last year with ‘Mise En scene: A Conversation with Arthur Penn’, in the classics section.
The highly symbolic ‘Mountain’ is set centuries ago in a village under Mount Latemar, in Italy’s Alto Adige region, where a farmer and his wife struggle with the fact that the 2,500-meter tall peak keeps the sun from shining on their crops.
“The film is one hundred percent in Italian, though, like my other movies, there isn’t much dialogue in it,” Naderi said. “In all my movies I try to push the characters in different cultures, countries and situations. Ultimately they are all survivors, because I believe humans should always make something impossible possible.”
Italian actors Andrea Sartoretti and Claudia Potenza will star in the film, shooting for which begins September 14 and is expected to last six weeks in a specially built village.
Interestingly, there is somewhat of a parallel, in reverse, to Naderi making a movie in Italy after making a film in Japan, with fellow Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami who made a movie first in Italy, ‘Certified Copy’, in 2010, and subsequently one in Japan, ‘Like Someone in Love’, in 2012.
“Abbas is a close friend,” Naderi said. “After I made ‘The Cut’ in Japan (2011) I pushed him to make a movie there and he told me to go to Italy; but every filmmaker wants to make a movie in Italy”.
Martin Scorsese’s the Film Foundation restored Naderi’s 1985 Iranian picture, ‘The Runner’, a semi-autobiographical portrait of a young boy struggling to survive on the streets after losing his family during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. The film gained wide critical recognition on the international film festival circuit.
