“Me at the Experimental Cinema Centre, why close to FdI? But if they are Pupi Avati!”

The director speaks: “Once Rossellini was at the Film School, now I had to look for the director on Google. Would the government want to choose me because I’m right-wing? I don’t belong: look at my curriculum”

“I director of the Experimental Center of Cinematography because I’m right? But if they are Pupi Avati! I have over 50 years of career behind me, I’ve made 54 films. I don’t want to sound presumptuous, but seeing myself associated with the Brothers of Italy makes me laugh”. And therefore one of the most long-lived and authoritative Italian directors is now accused of being an accomplice to this government of fascist means, which after Rai would like to “get his hands on Italian cinema”. Placing “area” personalities at the top of the Experimental Center. “And yet I confess that no one called me. And probably no one will do it ”, he tells Il Foglio between serious and amused. Why on earth, master? “Because if it’s true that I’ve never been on the left, and I’ve paid for this throughout my career, it’s not true that I’m on the right. Let’s just say they might only think of me because of my expertise. But let’s see how the Experimental Center has worked over the years…”. Tell us, we are fasting. “Well, it’s such a prestigious institution that whoever runs it has a huge responsibility. Yet it doesn’t seem to me that the quality in recent years has been excellent. Political affiliation mattered most. Once there were Roberto Rossellini, Giuseppe Rotunno, Virgilio Tosi. I the director who is now I had to google her to find out who she was”. They say that you are a close friend of Giorgia Meloni, do you deny it? “I feel with her. But only because you have the great virtue of responding when I ask you some questions. A bit like Mario Draghi did too. Everyone else has always given a damn.”