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A K I S S … G I V E M E A K I S S , J U S T O N E !

S O T H A T O N E D A Y E V E R Y T H I N G W I L L B E S P L E N D I D .

F O R M E A N D F O R Y O U

A n t o n i o L i g a b u e

I W A N T E D T O H I D E

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T H E P R O J E C T

Antonio Ligabue

(1899-1965) Born in Zurich, he was immediately left in an orphanage

by his birth mother, who was originally from Belluno, and was later

given to the Göbels, a Swiss-German couple without children who

lived near San Gallo. There he had a troubled and unhappy childhood,

which forced him to pass from one institution to the next to cure his

serious behavioral issues. Ugly and deformed, he lived as an outcast in

the woods of the Lower Po. His encounter with painting came early

and was his salvation. From 1920 on, it would be his travel companion

and would lead him to garner interest from other artists, critics and

merchants, who slowly began to support him.

Antonio Ligabue’s art is born out of impossibility: the impossibility

of living a happy childhood, the impossibility of communicating, the

impossibility of loving. This is the story of a man who was considered

mad, who lives on the margins of society, who is one of many destined

for oblivion. It is a story that seems to have already been written, but

it ends differently, in Rome, with a great exhibition and the blessing

of both critics and the public.

Today he is considered one of the most interesting figures of

Twentieth-century art, and his paintings are the subject of exhibitions

and events in countries all around the world.

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F I L M D I R E C T I O N

Giorgio Diritti

Giorgio Diritti is a director, screenwriter and film editor born in

Bologna on December 12, 1959.

He made his film debut with The Wind Blows round (2005) and has

participated in more than 60 national and international festivals,

where he has won around 40 awards. He received 5 nominations at

the David di Donatello Awards in 2008 and 4 nominations at the

Nastro d’Argento Awards in 2008. The film also garnered a lot of

‘national interest’ and remained screening at the Cinema Mexico in

Milano for more than a year and a half. His second film, The Man

Who Will Come (2009), was presented at the Rome International Film

Festival in 2009, where it won the Grand Jury Prize, the Marc’Aurelio

d’Argento award, the Marc’Aurelio d’Oro del Pubblico award and the

‘La Meglio Gioventù’ Award. Released in cinemas in January 2010, it

won many awards, including Best Film, Best Producer and Best Sound

at the David di Donatello Awards in 2010 and Best Producer, Best

Production Design and Best Sound at the Nastro d’Argento in 2010.

Then in 2013, his film There will come a day, in which Jasmine Trinca

as the main character journeys into the Amazon to indigenous villages

in search of the meaning of life. It was entered in the Sundance Film

Festival.

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Considered an Italian film star, he has won numerous recognitions

throughout his career, including three David di Donatello awards

for Best Actor for My Brother Is an Only Child, Our Life and Leopardi.

Our Life also won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival

in 2010 and the Nastro d’Argento for Best Actor. He is admired for

his extraordinary versatility and has worked with the greatest Italian

directors, such as Ettore Scola, (Unfair Competition), Gianni Amelio

(Tenderness), Stefano Sollima (Suburra), Ferzan Özpetek (Magnificent

Presence), Giovanni Veronesi (The Fifth Wheel, What Will Happen to

Us), Emanuele Crialese (Respiro), Gianluca Maria Tavarelli (Break

Free), Michele Placido (Romanzo criminale), Gabriele Salvatores (Quo

vadis, Baby?, As God Commands), Paolo Virzì (N – Napoleon and Me,

Your Whole Life Ahead of You) and Daniele Vicari (The Past is a Foreign

Land, Diaz).

C A S T

Elio Germano

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Antonio Ligabue’s life was inextricably tied to his homeland, where

he returned to as a boy from Switzerland. Gualtieri, its homes and its

piazza, the long perpendicular roads, the nearby and ever present river

flowing slowly and continually changing, the fields and farmhouses

that encircle and define the limits of this land, its rural and farming

rhythms that mark days, weeks, months and entire existences, the

evolving seasons, the work animals and livestock that are an integral

part of this world, the sun, the cicadas, the fog, the cold and the

snow. All these elements along with others of pure imagination are

the heart, the creative air, the fire for Antonio’s painting. The film,

therefore, must feed on those places. In this case more than ever,

being able to film in the towns and fields where Ligabue left traces,

from Guastalla to Reggio Emilia and the Po river floodplain, is the

most honest way to bring to life the splendor that they represented in

the mind of this artist.

L O C A T I O N

The Lower Poand Gualtieri surroundings

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Toni, defined then and often also today as crazy, was more than

anything a child who was rejected many times over and born with

physical problems that made him an outcast and that led to his

marginalization and probably also his mental disorders. He was,

however, a man who could express, through his characteristic art,

an incredible talent, a strong and original perspective of his life. He

started painting without any specific method and without knowing

Van Gogh or les Fauves, whose style his work seems at least in part

to resemble. His paintings express a particular outlook on life. They

see it as a continuous fight to not give up and contain a strong desire

for redemption. His sculptures are not only realistic but convey

intense vital impulses. His self-portraits are photos of his state of

mind and his face, with small changes in expression in each piece.

His eyes, turned toward the observer, question, ask for a listen,

acknowledgement, a sign of affection.

Reexamining the path of his life, it seems obvious how much his

‘otherness’ is the source of a large part of his suffering but is also the

generative force behind his artistic identity and success.

D I R E C T O R ’ S N O T E S

Director’s Notes

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The story of Toni Ligabue has an intrinsically strong and spectacular

value given the extraordinary circumstances that have characterized

his life, and it also offers, through his journey, an important reflection

on the value of ‘diversity.’ Every person has a precious uniqueness

that, beyond appearances, can be a gift for the collective whole. ‘…if I

am different from you, that means I can also give you something you

aren’t familiar with…’ these were the words a disabled boy said to me

years ago.

Toni’s story is a ‘bitter fairy tale’ from which a great devotion to

life and the ability to never give up emerges. He resisted loneliness,

cold and hunger when he lived for years in a shack on the river. He

overcame humiliation, including stays in re-education institutions

and asylums.

The story of Ligabue enchants and questions. It presents an apparent

contradiction between an ungainly physique, a mind shrouded in

slight madness and a bright talent, one that is left hidden for a long

time until it finally emerges and becomes an extraordinary element

in the construction of an identity and the opportunity that he dreamt

of, anticipated, longed for and that ultimately saved him. On various

occasions, Toni proudly expresses the feeling of his being an artist,

claiming a recognition that would after his death make him much

more important than all those who, in life, belittled and mocked him.

But rural society of the Lower Po region, although in part accepting

of his oddities, showed little interest in his work if not for the acclaim

he would come to achieve as a renowned painter. The middle-class

society, the local intellectuals, who were more culturally prepared to

understand him, flattered him as an artist but excluded him as a man,

with a few exceptions.

Even during his success, Ligabue remained the mad painter with

fantastical visions of faraway worlds. The Salgari of painting.

Although he felt inadequate, Ligabue did not refuse to interact with

the rest of the world. He lived, until his death, the contradiction of

being a primeval man and drifter afflicted with the anxiety of identity.

Maybe his so-called madness was all there.

The story of Toni Ligabue, an imaginative and mad painter who

depicted tigers, gorillas, lions and jaguars on the banks of the Po

river, is scattered with bitterness, but is also a fairy tale, the story of a

rejected and isolated child who found a form of social redemption in

painting that allowed him to express himself and win the love of the

world.

D I R E C T O R ’ S N O T E S

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D I R E C T O R ’ S N O T E S

The narrative development of the screenplay derives from the intent

to make a simple biography of Antonio Ligabue, one that offers a

narrative path that follows Toni’s state of mind and uses the emotions

he experiences as the supporting cornerstone of the story; it is a

relationship that gives viewers a chance to intimately and deeply

participate in his life.

Although set in a realistic dimension and adhering to truth, the

film wishes to convey a hidden sense of a ‘dark fairy tale,’ which

accompanied Toni throughout his life and the rules of which he

himself embodies, in a certain way, starting with how he dresses,

but also in the way he expresses himself, gesticulates and moves.

The world that surrounds him also recalls the archetypes of fables in

which example figures can be recognized, such as the stepmother, the

‘pedophile’ father, the boarding school director, the mean children

that tease him and the adults who mock him. Once he was an adult,

a chorus of characters surrounded him – the country people – mostly

repelling, some themselves surreal and fabled, but from which

friendly figures slowly emerged who would be fundamental to Toni’s

redemption. Ligabue even recalls some characteristics from the films

of Chaplin: at his core, he is the same, someone different fighting for

their place in the sun.

There is a precise identity that corresponds to the era and the

photographic references that were found in the archives that exist

from the region.

The whole visual structure will be based on historical coherence but

with choices made in the field of the locations and costumes that give

even the slightest hint of a fairy tale dimension.

The photography and the visual ‘character’ of the film, although

adhering to a realistic dimension coherent with the era, follow more

than anything the emotional state of Toni, harmonizing from time

to time a resemblance between tone and his state of mind, found in

the moments of solitude or when creating his works, the sense of

confusion or hostility toward the world, his search for redemption

and his need to be loved…

Visual approach

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Artistic cast

Toni Ligabue Elio Germano

Toni Ligabue - adolescent Oliver Ewy Toni Ligabue - kid Leonardo Carrozzo Renato Marini Mazzacurati Pietro Traldi Madre Mazzacurati Orietta Notari Andrea Mozzali Andrea Gherpelli Nerone Denis Campitelli

Vandino Filippo Marchi Sassi Maurizio Pagliari Cesarina Francesca Manfredini Ivo Francesco Friggione Sergio Negri Matteo Ali Regista Andreassi Mario Perrotta Giornalista Canova Paolo Dallasta Elise Dagny Gioulami

Pina Paola Lavini Industriale Antonini Gianni Fantoni

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Technical cast

Idea and screenplay by Giorgio Diritti Tania Pedroni Fredo Valla

DOP Matteo Cocco Sound Carlo Missidenti Production Designer Ludovica Ferrario Costume Designer Ursula Patzak Composer Marco Biscarini and Daniele Furlati

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