Thursday, 23 January, at the Cinema delle Province in Rome, special screening of SHARKS by Alberto Rizzi, cinematographer Michele Brandstetter CCS. The director and part of the cast will attend.
Loosely inspired by The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, the film is set in the Lessini Mountains of the Italian Prealps in the present day. A modern Greek tragedy, a Veneto western, set in Italy’s far northeast. Through a series of misfortunes, the three half-brothers and their half-sister Camaso find themselves returning as adults to the home of their father, Leone Camaso (played by Mirko Artuso), a petty man, thief, and deceiver. Production: Magenta Film.
Michele Brandstetter CCS told us:
“Creating the visuals for Sharks was a wonderful challenge: a film inspired by The Brothers Karamazov, entirely independent, with a self-produced budget and locations that were sometimes very difficult to access. I wanted a painterly and less realistic look to enhance the excellent work done on location scouting and casting, transporting the audience to a timeless and rougher version of Lessinia than it is in reality. I prepared a custom LUT (starting from a Fuji print LUT) and chose anamorphic lenses with a strong character (P+S Evolution), paired with the always reliable ARRI ALEXA Mini. The colour palette is very compressed, with rather cool tones and green tints in the highlights in the Camaso family home, conveying an inhospitable and disharmonious world (thanks to Danilo Vittori, the project’s colorist). Director Alberto Rizzi has strong roots in theatre, which led to the decision to limit découpage and shoot very long takes, where the dynamics are provided by the movements of the actors and the camera (always on a dolly or tripod).”
Plot:
Leone Camaso’s children couldn’t be more different. Demetrio is a cold, domineering ex-soldier drowning in debt; Ivan is an unstable athlete at the end of his career, obsessed with an ex-girlfriend who has just left him; Alessio is a priest determined to redeem his family’s sins, devoted to a saint with whom he communicates in dreams. Sveva, on the other hand, is a suffering and rebellious young woman, the only one who stayed with their father, a sadistic and unkempt man who treats her more like a servant than a daughter. After many years of welcome distance, the dysfunctional Camaso family is reunited under the same roof at the home of their despised father Leone, and conflicts quickly resurface.
Read the review on MyMovies (in Italian).
