Mani nude, the new film by Mauro Mancini – already acclaimed for Non odiare – is released in cinemas today, 5 June. Premiered at the Rome Film Fest, the film brings to the big screen a story of harsh physical initiation, inspired by the novel of the same name by Paola Barbato, which explores the underground world of illegal fighting.
The protagonist is Davide (Francesco Gheghi), a young man torn from his everyday life and thrust into a brutal system that forces him to fight for survival. Guiding him through this path of transformation is Minuto (Alessandro Gassmann), an ambiguous and ambivalent figure – part coach, part jailer. The cast also features Fotinì Peluso, Renato Carpentieri, Paolo Madonna and Giordana Marengo.
Sandro Chessa CCS’s cinematography sculpts bodies and spaces with raw, essential light, in keeping with the narrative tension that drives the film. Gianluca Scarpa’s editing maintains a tight pace without ever losing sight of the emotional dimension, while Stefano Giambanco’s production design and Camilla Giuliani’s costumes create a closed, oppressive world from which escape seems impossible. The original score is composed by Dardust.
Produced by Pepito Produzioni, Eagle Original Content, Movimento Film and Rai Cinema, Mani nude is supported by the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Calabria Film Commission, which hosted the shoot in various towns across the region, including Cosenza, Soverato and Castiglione Cosentino. The film is distributed by Medusa Film.
A hand-to-hand struggle with reality, with one’s own limits, with the ever-uncertain possibility of finding oneself again, even when all seems lost.
SANDRO CHESSA TOLD US:
From the very first lines, the screenplay evoked powerful images, primary colours, echoes of rust and blood. We started with the idea of an auteur noir with dark tones and unsettling, acidic colours. A raw, violent light, like the challenges the protagonists of this story must face. The visual influences are multiple and varied: Fincher, Gaspar Noé and Benoît Debie, Wong Kar-Wai and Christopher Doyle, Paris, Texas, Egon Schiele, Francis Bacon. Mauro’s intention was to turn the settings into characters. A meticulous search, together with production designer Stefano Giambanco, took us as far as the shores of the Black Sea in Bulgaria and then into the Calabrian hinterland, in an effort to create an original world. Industrial ruins, sand quarries, abandoned ships are enhanced by extreme wide-angle lenses, with the aim of magnifying or transfiguring them. On the other hand, it is the protagonists’ faces that become landscapes – marked by scars and tears, by time and pain – explored through macro lenses and telephoto shots.
