On the computer screen, their faces nod, their shoulders undulate, their hands twist, in an entirely Italian gesture. The first, zero ball and abundant verb, is called Lorenzo Mieli, 48 years old; the second, pepper hair and salt beard, Mario Gianani, 51 years old.
The interview takes place by videoconference, due to the health crisis, but this duo of producers is not only on the move when it comes to Zoom. Co-founders of Wildside in 2009, the two Romans have made this production company one of the most invigorating of the Boot. Bought by the European conglomerate Fremantle in 2015, the company has been headed by Gianani alone since the creation by his friend, a year and a half ago, of The Apartment, housed by the same holding company. Enough to continue their collaboration at will, which oscillates from the small to the big screen with as much pace as it is going.
Their news speaks, so to speak, for them. At the Venice Film Festival, which runs until September 11, they will present three films, two of which are in competition: God’s hand, advertised as the movie “The most intimate” by Paolo Sorrentino, on the Naples of the 1980s; and America Latina, a thriller by brothers Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo. This summer, Lorenzo Mieli took care of the shooting ofEsterno notte, the first series by an 81-year-old filmmaker, the venerable Marco Bellocchio; a counterpoint to Buongiorno, notte (2003), his chilling account of the hostage-taking of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades in 1978. At the same time, Mieli was supervising another shoot, in Ohio, in the United States: that of Bones & All, by Luca Guadagnino, around two teenage cannibals. This horror film will seal the Sicilian’s reunion with the juvenile star Timothée Chalamet, four years later Call Me By Your Name.
“Son of” and “husband of”
As if that weren’t enough, Mieli and Gianani just unveiled Anna at the Séries Mania festival in Lille. Or the second series, after Il Miracolo (2018), by writer Niccolò Ammaniti, visible from September 10 on the Arte platform, before a broadcast this fall on the channel, which co-produced it. Written and partly filmed before the pandemic, it describes a humanity struck by a virus decimating the over 14s …
Lorenzo Mieli: “Very early on, we wanted to remove authors from their comfort zone. In other words, mix everything up. “
In addition, there are a number of so-called “developing” projects: a series of television stories by the very promising Alice Rohrwacher; a biopic of Hollywood’s most adamantine actress, Audrey Hepburn; the serial adaptation of M, the writer Antonio Scurati’s trilogy on Benito Mussolini; that, no less delicate, of Limonov (POL, 2011) by Emmanuel Carrère at the cinema… And a whole flood of scenarios which wait in the pipes of the duo.
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