‘To tell a love story, you must not be afraid to open yourself up emotionally.
But to venture into a fairy tale, you have to take a few risks:
once you accept its rules, you have to embrace everything, even the unthinkable.’
Salvatore Mereu
Salvatore Mereu’s Alberi erranti is in competition at the Locarno Film Festival. Written by Mereu together with Alberto Capitta, the film is an ambitious, wide-ranging work with a running time of 180 minutes, starring Romeo Perrone, Giulia Maenza, Lorenzo Richelmy, Lupo Barbiero and Edoardo Raiola. Cinematography is by Francesco Piras CCS, with Emita Frigato also responsible for the production design. The film is edited by Salvatore Mereu and Jacopo Quadri, with sound by Beatrice Mele and sound mixing by Rainer Russo. Costume design is by Salvatore Aresu and Noemi Tronza.
Alberi erranti is produced by VIACOLVENTO, in co-production with Rai Cinema. International sales are handled by Minerva Pictures. The project was made with the support of the Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual of the Italian Ministry of Culture, the Autonomous Region of Sardinia, the Sardegna Film Commission and the Province of Nuoro.
Piero and his son Giuliano live alone beyond the outskirts of the city, in a farmhouse crowded with injured animals that they take in and care for. The Nonne family, local notables, want to drive them away because they live like vagrants. During a heavy snowfall, Piero disappears and the animals are killed. Giuliano sets out in search of his father. Along the way, he meets Maddalena, and it is love at first sight.
Francesco Piras CCS told us :
«‘I approached the cinematography of this film with an extremely free approach, allowing natural light above all to guide the storytelling. I searched for the light, followed it, waited for it and, at times, simply embraced it in all its simplicity, so that it could become an integral part of the magical realism that runs through the film.
The shoot took place over an extended period, following the rhythm of the seasons and their transformations. We worked through snow, rain and wind, filming by the sea, along rivers and in the mountains of Sardinia, often making use of the light at dawn and sunset, and those brief moments of transitional light when everything seems suspended.
We shot the entire film on an ARRI ALEXA Mini with a single lens, a Zeiss CP.2 Super Speed 35mm. It was an essential choice that allowed us to maintain a consistent perspective and a strong sense of closeness to the characters, without ever disrupting the direct relationship with the spaces and the landscape.
The film is constructed through numerous long takes, which I operated myself. This allowed me to maintain constant, direct control over the framing, movement and, above all, the light, which often required an extremely precise point of view throughout the film. With natural light changing so constantly, it was always necessary to find the right angle and adjust it as the light shifted. Operating the camera myself was therefore a way of preserving that intimate and immediate relationship between the actors, the landscape and the light.
Every photographic choice was guided by the intention not to aestheticise reality or impose a visual style, but rather by an attempt to find an image that felt authentic and deeply coherent with the world of the film.
Naturally, there were also moments of considerable technical complexity. We lit a forest for a long night sequence and recreated rain under particularly difficult conditions. One of the most demanding challenges was shooting the sequence set during a snowstorm: for two days, the crew carried all the equipment on their shoulders to the top of the mountain, as the fog and weather conditions made it impossible to use a helicopter.
Diegetic lighting also played a fundamental role, emerging from an intensive dialogue with production designer Emita Frigato. Together, we tried to ensure that every source of light genuinely belonged to the world of the film. The aim was to allow the magic to emerge from the light itself and discreetly accompany the atmosphere of the fairy tale imagined by Salvatore Mereu.
It is a cinematography that seeks to reveal the landscape and the faces in a film where the real and the wondrous coexist naturally.’ ».
