NOIAFT correspondent Giò Crisafulli interviews writer-director Laura Luchetti at Open Roads: New Italian Cinema, the only screening series to offer North American audiences a diverse and extensive lineup of contemporary Italian films.
In writer-director Laura Luchetti’s strikingly photographed second feature, two teenage runaways forge a relationship haunted by their respective pasts. Anna (Anastasiya Bogach) is eluding a human trafficker for whom her father worked, and Basim (Kallil Kone) is a refugee from the Ivory Coast in search of gainful employment. Together they embark on a dangerous trip across the tough but breathtaking terrain of Sardinia in the hopes of overcoming their personal demons. The remarkable chemistry between Bogach and Kone—both nonprofessional actors—carries Luchetti’s powerful film about coming of age in the throes of the refugee crisis.
Giò Crisafulli is a producer, writer, director, editor, and actor. He has produced, written, directed, and edited a handful of shorts and one feature for Zio Ciccio Cinema. He has a Bachelor Degree in Communication and International Studies from Marymount Manhattan College, and graduated the two-year training program at the William Esper Studio in the study of the Meisner technique. He has acted in a number of television movies and commercials for Japanese production company Fujisankei, was in “Blizhniy Boy: The Ultimate Fighter” starring David Carradine and Eric Roberts, and played real New York Mets second baseman Felix Millian in the television movie, “Mitch Albom’s For One More Day”. He was an honorary member of the African Women’s Repertory Theater where he performed in dozens of original plays, and was a member of the Michael Chekhov Theater Company performing in numerous productions of the works of Sam Shepard and John Patrick Shanley.
Produced by Taylor Taglianetti
Videography: Austin Tucker
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