Interview curated by Lorenzo Lamberti
Premiered out of competition at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, Il mostro is the new series by Stefano Sollima. It tackles one of the most disturbing cases in Italian history – that of the so-called Monster of Florence. You worked on events that really happened, which of course come with extensive documentation. How did you approach this documentary aspect on a visual level?
We had access to a vast archive of period images and the guidance of a criminologist, who helped us accurately reconstruct the events related to the murders. This was the foundation – as Stefano often pointed out – for maintaining the utmost accuracy while also showing respect towards the victims and their families. Personally, I conducted extensive research, trying to absorb all the information gathered by Stefano and screenwriter Leonardo Fasoli, both before the writing phase and throughout the entire production process. Together with Stefano, I also had the privilege of meeting Silvia Della Monica, the public prosecutor who initiated and followed the case with remarkable determination. An extraordinary woman and a magistrate of great integrity. That said, the series has its own narrative structure and an original approach to the crime genre. It speaks of men and women belonging to a still deeply archaic society – that of Sardinian migrants who came to the Tuscan countryside as shepherds and later struggled to integrate into their new social reality – but it also portrays the first signs of change, the dawn of female emancipation, and the desperate pursuit of independence by its female characters, often crushed by the violence of social conventions.
At the time, traditional values were more deeply rooted in the countryside than in Florence, which instead represented a society in rapid transformation. The story of the “Monster” spans the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. As can be seen, we did not adopt a visual language typical of crime or action genres, unlike in other projects I’ve done with Stefano. Instead, we aimed to portray human beings with gentleness, because even “monsters” – the murderers or presumed ones – are part of the world they come from and, in a way, they reveal it to us. They too are victims of social and cultural constraints. A significant part of the series addresses the repression of homosexuality, alongside the constant theme of violence against women, perceived not as partners but as possessions. It’s a harsh aspect, yet handled with restraint, seeking a human and sensitive gaze. I think, for instance, of the beautiful character of Barbara Locci (Francesca Olia), in her desperate attempt to achieve freedom – a freedom that is also a longing for love – continually suppressed and abused. All the women surrounding the series’ male protagonists share this same condition: they are victims of violent men, deprived of any chance of autonomy. The only exception is the character of Silvia Della Monica (Liliana Bottone), a young magistrate and one of the first women to hold that position, seen at the time as a brave anomaly. She herself recalls how difficult it was for her colleagues to accept her determination to understand the deeper motives of the case – that of Italy’s most infamous serial killer – while public opinion spoke merely of a maniac attacking young couples.
When dealing with such a traumatic and violent story, there is always a risk of falling into the “pornography of pain”. During pre-production, how much did you reflect on this ethical dilemma?
There was never a real dilemma: from the very beginning it was clear that we had to be respectful, not prudish. Going into the details of violence – sexual or physical – was unnecessary. We all knew that we would never show the Monster’s acts in detail, but rather let them be sensed. In those moments, the gaze always remains distant. Yet I believe that this very distance intensifies the viewer’s pain: what is only suggested is far more powerful than what is shown. Often, and increasingly as the series progressed, Stefano would ask for very wide shots, vast long takes. The nocturnal settings where the Monster killed were natural environments, open countryside, dark, with no urban lighting, on moonless nights. As far as possible, I tried to portray that darkness. We worked on a fine edge, between modesty and obscurity – a modesty that is, above all, a form of respect for the people, the bodies, the souls of the women who were murdered and of the young men involved in those events.
What were, then, the main issues you had to confront?
In Il mostro there are constant temporal shifts, but rather than flashbacks, they are parallel timelines. From the start, we agreed that we shouldn’t visually differentiate the periods – the 1960s from the ’80s, for instance – because that would have been simplistic and didactic. We’re portraying a world, and the narrative structure itself allows the viewer to find their bearings: it’s not a matter of more or less colour, but of emotion. Emotion must always be the guiding element – both in the more overtly crime-related moments and in those depicting the life and environments that evoke the era. In such a complex and layered series, where temporal and spatial planes intertwine, maintaining awareness and control over the narrative is crucial: always knowing the precise point in the story. Stefano Sollima has an extraordinary command of narrative structure. That awareness was the foundation for building a coherent fresco. We also had an element that helped us greatly: the narrative unity of the first season, entirely devoted to the so-called “Sardinian trail”. In each of the first four episodes, we return several times to the same settings, which therefore had to be immediately recognisable, inhabited – at different moments – by one or another of the presumed killers.
The series indeed has many dark tones, with murders depicted in extremely low light conditions and, as you mentioned, during moonless nights. That must have been quite a challenge for the cinematographer. How difficult was it to create those night scenes?
It was a complex undertaking, and from this point of view the production, led by Gianfranco Barbagallo and Fabio Carlà, collaborated impeccably. We constantly pushed the technical limits to go beyond them. The challenge of the vast nocturnal wide shots that Sollima wanted was tackled in two ways. For the broadest shots (often captured with Action Drone’s drones), we filmed during the very last hour of daylight, right on the threshold of night, so as to preserve both legibility and realism. The car headlights traced the paths, lending credibility to the scene, while the sky still retained a faint glow, and a residual light gently illuminated the countryside. I was always desperately searching for that half-light that still allowed the landscape to be discerned – total darkness would have made everything invisible. Before shooting began, during a meeting with Netflix’s creative producers, I was asked how I intended to deal with the challenge of such extreme darkness.
They wanted to make sure I wasn’t so radical as to work in total darkness. I tried to reassure them honestly by explaining my visual concept. We know twilight doesn’t last long, so to continue the scenes into the night we almost always used helium lighting balloons (supplied by ALF Service, the Chirici Brothers) – often at least two – to create a soft, diffused light across very large spaces. Sometimes I would switch one off to obtain deeper shadow areas or a slight backlight. It was a real challenge, especially since there were many night shoots and the balloons are extremely sensitive to wind. In some countryside locations where we couldn’t anchor them to cranes, we had to build cages to keep them stable: I remember nights with gusts of 40 or 50 kilometres per hour when it seemed impossible to keep shooting, but thanks to the impeccable work of the grips and electricians we always managed. (For this I must thank key grip Marco Emidi and his team, and gaffer Gabriele Gorga with his electricians, for their outstanding work.) My idea was to start from twilight light and extend it over time, recreating it in a more controlled way. There is a very complex scene – one of the Monster’s murders – shot in a single long take: the camera starts from afar, with a huge wide shot of a car among the vineyards, slowly moves towards another car and, in one single shot, impeccably executed with the Trinity by my colleague Stefano Paradiso CCS, narrates the entire dynamics of one of the Monster’s killings. This scene was lit only with helium balloons and a small LED “soap bar” inside the car.
The interiors also posed significant challenges: Stefano wanted no technical structures to be visible outside the windows. To achieve this, we used multiple cranes positioned at considerable distances, allowing the widest possible field of view in real locations. At times, we mounted two cranes with a central truss from which we suspended lights equipped with remotely controlled heads. Once the ambient lighting was established, the setup remained consistent, with only minor adjustments made as needed. This approach gave everyone – especially the actors – a powerful sense of authenticity: the set coincided with reality, and within that reality, the story could truly unfold. The technical apparatus, as it should be, was there but had to remain invisible, hidden from view. Once again, I must stress that the visual quality of any cinematic narrative stems from the collaboration between production design – here by Paki Meduri – costume design, by Mariano Tufano – and cinematography. Without their exceptional work, Il mostro would not exist in the form it does today.
What kind of choice did you and Stefano Sollima make in representing this serial killer? How did you approach that aspect?
Each time we reconstructed a murder, we couldn’t show “the Monster”; we could only evoke his presence without ever giving him a face. So we used the silhouettes of our actors, always trying to make them as unrecognisable as possible. It could have been Salvatore Vinci, or Francesco Vinci, or perhaps Giovanni Mele – depending on which of them the suspicion might fall on in that particular moment – but there always had to remain doubt, because any attempt to give the serial killer a face required maintaining uncertainty. Young people at the time lived in an atmosphere of fear and gloom. My wife is from Florence. She was a teenager then and remembers the signs warning young people not to go out at night in the countryside because it was dangerous. There was a tangible sense of tension – so many murders had occurred, and the investigation was still open, with a possible serial killer at large. Imagine what that meant for the young generation of that era. In the series, we don’t yet portray the population’s fear, but rather the investigators’ anxiety as they struggle to find answers. That tension is the feeling that drives the slow movement of the camera – when it moves, it moves gently and deliberately. Every time Stefano noticed even the slightest nervousness in the camera movement, he would stop us. In Il mostro, this deliberate stylistic choice is evident – very different from the shaky handheld camera of Romanzo criminale, the constant tension of Gomorra, or the almost complete stillness of Suburra, composed of fixed frames. In
Tell us about the lens set you used, the camera, and everything related to your cinematographic work.
In constructing the image, the main choices concerned the sensor, the lenses, and the type of lighting. I sought the greatest possible visual softness, while still needing significant brightness to handle the vast night exteriors. I used the large-format sensor of the ALEXA Mini LF, as this format allows for a shallow depth of field combined with high definition, yet maintains a natural gentleness in the image. The lenses were K-35/FD (supplied by D Vision Movie People), produced in the 1980s – about 45 years old today – and they still retain the distinctive qualities of that era. They are made with natural glass crystals, which makes them extremely transparent, and they have a very wide aperture, T1.5, which gives them great luminosity but never harshness. They respond delicately even to highlights. Thanks to the exceptional skill of focus puller Tiziano Saraca and the attention of camera and Steadicam operator Andrea Grossi, I was able to make the most of them. When I work on a face – especially on female faces, and in this case, the faces of women marked by violence – I always feel that to convey emotion, one must find a subtle, simple, and evocative balance of light and colour between the face and the background. For this reason, I used very bright lenses and wide apertures to achieve, even while remaining in the spherical format, a painterly blur similar to that of anamorphic optics. The choice of vintage lenses with genuine, non-synthetic glass contributed greatly to this result. In particular, the 50mm Rangefinder, with its T1 aperture, allowed me to create a soft visual blend between close-ups and landscape, turning reality into a palette of colours. All of this stems from my desire to transform a harsh and raw reality into a “novel of reality”, so that the viewer is captivated more by the story than by its realism. The emotional resonance of the story endures over time, alongside the visual allure, but what remains foremost is the thought of the events themselves. Our ambition – shared by the entire crew and by Stefano Sollima above all – was precisely this: to turn an Italian story into a universal narrative, one that can be understood and appreciated beyond the borders of our country.
Thank you, Paolo. We look forward to the next seasons.
Il mostro – Technical sheet
Produced for Netflix by The Apartment
Camera, lighting and grip equipment: DVision Movie People (Pierpaolo Gualà, Massimo Proietti, Michele Misiti)
Camera and Steadicam operator: Andrea Grossi
Focus puller: Tiziano Saraca and his wonderful team
DIT: Andrea Cuomo
Gaffer: Gabriele Gorga
Key grip: Marco Emidi
Colourist: Red (Andrea Baracca)
Laboratory: Flat Parioli
Visual effects: EDI (supervisor Stefano Leoni)
Camera: ARRI ALEXA Mini LF
Lenses: Canon K-35/FD – Sumire
