Following its out-of-competition screening at the Locarno Film Festival, Il Vangelo di Giuda, the new film directed by Giulio Base, will have its preview today, 30 March, at the Cinema Adriano in Rome, ahead of its Italian theatrical release on 2 April. The film offers a reinterpretation of the apocryphal text attributed to Judas Iscariot, constructing a narrative that moves between historical dimension and contemporary interpretation, questioning the role of betrayal within the Gospel story. The cast includes, among others, Rupert Everett and Abel Ferrara, alongside an international ensemble that also features Tomas Arana and Darko Perić. The screenplay is written by Giulio Base himself, with cinematography by Giuseppe Riccobene, and original music by Checco Pallone.
The film is produced by Agnus Dei Production in collaboration with Rai Cinema, with the support of the Calabria Film Commission and other European partners, and distributed in Italy by Filmclub Distribuzione. The Rome screening will be attended by the director and part of the cast, along with guests from the world of cinema and culture.
Ci ha raccontato Giuseppe Riccobene CCS:
«When I read the script for Il Vangelo di Giuda, I immediately understood that it was something extraordinary. Giulio Base, as always, had carried out thorough research before beginning to write, and the result was a dense, visionary work, capable of drawing the reader – and later the viewer – into a world that is distant yet surprisingly alive.
When it came to visual choices, he asked me a simple and disarming question: ‘Giuseppe, did electricity exist in the time of Jesus?’ The answer was already in the question. From that moment on, I knew I would not bring a single light bulb onto the set. Shooting entirely with diegetic light became the most radical challenge of my career: candles and oil lamps for interiors, torches and braziers for night exteriors. The set design effectively became my lighting department. It was a choice that, once I overcame the initial hesitation, I fully embraced, because it brought a sense of truth to the image. Two further conditions were added to this approach: handheld camera for the entire film, and a single focal length – the 32mm ARRI Ultra Prime, the focal length closest to the field of view of the human eye. No lens changes, no compromises. A single point of view, coherent and physical, always present.
To meet these extreme demands, I chose the ARRI Alexa 35, a camera with exceptional sensitivity – 6400 ISO in Extended Sensitivity – which performed perfectly under minimal lighting conditions, never compromising the blacks nor introducing noise into the image. In colour correction, together with the colourist Sebastiano Greco, the work was surprisingly clean: minor adjustments, with great respect for the natural light of the sources. The tests carried out at the REC rental house in Rome, with the invaluable support of Giuseppe Avenia and Alessandro Gallo, were crucial in allowing us to arrive on set with clear ideas and solid technical confidence.
The real complexity, however, was narrative. In this film, the camera is Judas. The character is never shown frontally – always in profile, always partially obscured – and when he is not in frame, it is I, through the camera, who assume his point of view. Defining the boundary between the character’s gaze and the gaze of the film itself became the most subtle and fascinating aspect of the entire production. It was an ongoing dialogue with Giulio, one that made this film something truly unique for me.
The final result exceeded all my expectations – to the point of earning the film an out-of-competition presentation at the Locarno Film Festival, one of the most prestigious platforms in international cinema. ».
