ITALY – 2022 – DCP – color – 106’

CREDITS:

Direction: Alberto Ferrari

Screenplay: Alberto Ferrari in collaborazione con Alessandra Piccinni, Michele Belsanti, Cristiano Malacrino

Cinematography: Gino Sgreva

Editing: Pietro Morana

Set design: Paolo Bonfini

Costumes: Chiara Ferrantini

Cast: Raoul Bova (Pierre), Serena Autieri (Sofia), Francesco Pannofino (Oscar), Tullio Solenghi (grandfather Angelo Angelo), Ornella Muti (grandmother Rita), Alice Andrea Ferrari (Alice), Giulio Nunziante Cesaro (Ricky), Francesca Giovannetti (director),
Jerry Mastromenico (producer), Francesca Della Ragione (tv host), Nicolò Bertonelli (Edo), Adriano Occulto (Tommaso), Gianni Franco (Nicola), Daniele Foresi (intern), Valentina Illuminati (Gaia), Charles Anthony Maxwell (Sergio), Ferdinando Ciacca (Anacleto), Gianluca Mech (sponsor reality show director)

Producer: Pier Paolo Piastra

Production: Viva Productions, Pama Film Productions
Distribution: Viva Productions in collaboration with Altre Storie, Adler Entertainment

SYNOPSIS

Sofia and her two children, Ricky and Alice, lead a disenchanted life amidst the many difficulties of everyday life, but for the Rovatifamily this Christmas will be extraordinary. Their unexpected participation in the popular reality Christmas Show will make themexperience overwhelming situations and the arrival of the mysterious neighbor, the charming Pierre, will make Sofia’s heart beatagain.An exciting Christmas comedy divided between reality and the wonder of everyday life.

THE DIRECTOR: ALBERTO FERRARI

He was very active in Milan as a theater director between the 1980s and 1990s and staged authors such as Ionesco, P. Shaffer,J.Anouilh, T. Williams, and more. He wroteCamille Claudelalongside L. Lunari. In 1994 he founded the Teatro Libero in Milantogether with Gianna Breil, and directed the many plays taking place in this theatre. He has worked for the television since the late1990s, curating formats and shooting successful series. The film debut dates back to 2001, when he writesTra due donne(based onthe bookDio ne scampi dagli Orsenigoby V. Imbriani) together with L. Lunari, in Competition in Lecce. He achieves the partnershipwith the comic duo Ale and Franz withLa terza stella(2005). The remake rights ofA Son Named Erasmus(2020), his penultimatefilm, were sold in France. In 2020 the producer Pier Paolo Piastra gave him the task of writing and directingThe Christmas Show.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
“The Christmas Show is a film about the magic of Christmas and about that feeling, that more or less all of us feel inside when
December 25th approaches. It is the desire to tickle that part of us that still believes in Santa Claus, and will never stop believing.
Maybe because, basically, it’s nice to think that everything is possible, at least in those days.
During the making of The Christmas Show, I tried to narrate the story by inserting it into real everyday life, but adding an
indispensable hint of magical realism that makes life itself sometimes more bearable, and sometimes wonderful. I did this to try to
amplify the most common feeling in all of us: to see, even in adversity and in dark times, a window of hope. A hope that does not
arise from a religious faith or from some kabbalistic superstition, but that is generated, self-nourished and determined only in the
sharing and exchange of relationships between human beings.
The extraordinary that invades the everyday life and makes it unique, and changes a situation that seemed immutable is what
fascinates me about telling stories.
All this, of course, is conveyed with the language of comedy, where even more complicated concepts and situations find their natural
narrative dimension with the lightness and brightness that belongs to this genre.
In writing this comedy, we wanted to play with the universal collective imagination; we drew on the forms of Christmas that have
now evolved in us from a frequentation and enjoyment of international archetypes and stylistic features concerning Christmas, while
maintaining the uniqueness and the identity of our being deeply Italian and everything that determines us culturally and as humans.
The story is easily told: a family that no longer celebrates Christmas after a bereavement that forces them to a slow-release
elaboration, will suddenly find themselves projected into a Christmas reality show, which will force them to deal with their own
interrupted life; through gimmicks, gags and exciting moments, they will rediscover the sense of Christmas and the hope they had
lost.
It’s a choral comedy where everyone is indispensable to the other’s transformation, in a succession of twists, revelations, laughter
and moving moments.
As always, the most important means to emotionally move the audience are mainly the actors. And the cast of the film enjoyed
“playing” with the characters, making them live and dream with great passion.
Just like photography – which warmed up the situations and made the nights magical and the snow even softer, playing with our
memory -, the scenography also reproduced environments, colors, laid tables and fireplaces that reflect on the characters’ faces the
heat and warmth that you only see at one time of the year: at Christmas.
The music has also amplified and given sound to the emotions we feel and makes them resonate within us.
I tried to narrate this story visually with a very high filmic narrative and editing rhythm, with shots that enlarged the environment and
the story that took place mainly at home. I looked for lightness with the appropriate use of objectives and necessary camera
movements to express the various parts of the narrative discourse and to make the story enjoyable.
We wrote this story during the pandemic and we wanted it to be for us, first of all, a small light to rediscover those infinite things that
we missed, and, above all, the warmth.
It’s a “small” story, like one of those little ships enclosed in a bottle that, with a pinch of imagination, can sail endless seas and oceans.
We wanted to narrate a story about Christmas, to tell each other at Christmas, to feel good all together: this was our only “small and
big” goal.”

FILMOGRAPHY

2001 Tra due donne
2005 La terza stella
2020 Un figlio di nome Erasmus (A Son Named Erasmus)
2022 The Christmas Show