“I want to have the illusion that setting an example counts”

By Béatrice Gurrey

Posted today at 04:22

Tall, lean, elegant, caustic, affable, biting, and molto simpatico, Nanni Moretti remains, at 68, true to himself. After many successes, among which Personal diary (1994), The son’s room (2001), Habemus Papam (2011), the Italian director and actor presents Tre piani. This fifteenth feature film, in official selection at the last Cannes Film Festival, is released in theaters on November 10.

Nanni Moretti, at the Cannes Film Festival, in May 2015.

I wouldn’t have gotten there if …

Yes, at 17, I had not stopped water polo. I played in league 1 and the national junior team. I started playing again, five years later, while being aware that I did not realize myself in a swimming pool. And I had already started shooting a short film. If I had continued water polo, I think I would have done the 1976 and 1980 Olympics, then I would have become a coach. I don’t see any other way out. I couldn’t imagine myself as a teacher, like my mom, dad, sister and brother. Even though I think it’s a great job. But I did not have a good education and I regret it.

When I was 17, there was a whole series of dropouts: I quit playing politics and I quit school. It wasn’t a good time. I went to Paris for two weeks and to London for two weeks, where my brother was preparing his thesis in English literature. I started to study alone and I passed my baccalaureate as a free candidate.

I imagine that there are also positive reasons, not just waivers?

I wouldn’t have gotten there if I hadn’t lived in Rome. If I had made my first feature film in super-8, I am a self-sufficient [1976], in a small town nothing would have happened at all. In Rome, forty-five years ago, newspapers still counted, there was national television, RAI, and this super-8 cine-club where my film appeared. Thanks to the case that we made of this film I found a real producer to make a real film, Ecce Bombo [1978], screened in real cinemas.

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At 22 – after three short films in super-8 – I wrote a screenplay called Militanza, militanza, for which I was looking for producers. I quickly realized that with such a subject, not only would they not produce it, but they would not even read the script. If I had started whining and complaining about the nasty movie industry, I would have entered the vicious cycle of victimization. If I had considered myself as a “misunderstood of the system”, as a victim, I would not have arrived there. This is also due to the welcome received Ecce Bombo, a perfect misunderstanding! I thought I had made a painful film for a small audience and found out that it was a comedic, mainstream film.

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