Isabella Torre and Jonas Carpignano on Mixing Mythical Nymphs and Contemporary Reality in Venice Days Closer ‘Basileia’ – Watch Clip (EXCLUSIVE)
Isabella Torre is at Venice with her first feature “Basileia.” The film follows an archaeologist who, while exploring a tomb containing an ancient treasure in Southern Italy’s rugged Aspromonte mountains, unleashes mythical nymphs.
The dark fairytale – which is closing the fest’s independently run Giornate Degli Autori, also known as Venice Days – was developed at the Sundance Lab. It is produced by Torre’s partner, director Jonas Carpignano (“A Chiara”) and sold by Luxbox. “Basileia” is an expansion of Torre’s short “Nymphs,” which premiered at Venice Horizons in 2018. The film’s cast comprises Angela Fontana (“Indivisibili”) and Danish-American actor Elliott Crosset Hove (“Godland”).
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Below, Torre and Carpignano speak to Variety about venturing into the non-conventional genre space with a tale that mixes mythology and present-day reality.
How did the story of “Basilea” germinate?
Torre: It’s all because of Aspromonte, which is not just a location — it became like one of the main characters as well. Jonathan and I have been living in Calabria [the region on the toe of the Italian boot] for many years, and Aspromonte is a place where we often go. It’s such a special, mysterious place that has more to say than most people might imagine. Not everyone knows about Aspromonte, but those who do usually know it for the wrong reason because its history of being used as a refuge for mafia activity and all those kinds of things that are just a part of it, while there is so much more.
The first thing that came to my mind were just images. Images of the landscapes, that are so magical. I could tell that nature was completely taking over just looking from the window of our car through the trees. Then, when you get to know the people, you discover another incredible side, because nature is so present there that it rules everything and makes people live differently. I feel like we are at a time when the world has been influenced by modernity and gentrification and colonization everywhere. But not there. Of course, kids have Instagram and all these kinds of things, and of course they’re just like other kids all over the world. But at the same time, they have this attachment to their history and I don’t think that’s ever going to change. I feel like Aspromonte is staying very true to itself and its roots, and that there is a lot to say about this.
“Basilea” features nymphs, wolves and mystical energies, but it’s also very rooted in the reality of the region. Do you consider it a genre movie?
Torre: I’m not able to categorize it, to box it into a genre. But I think it’s the closest thing to one of those old dark tales that grandparents used to tell us that didn’t have a great ending, where there was no prince coming to save the princess. They were just very dark, and sometimes you didn’t even understand them, and they were something that maybe was never even written. They were just told by grandma and passed down through the years, but had this dark core and they were very real.
Do you have some cinematic references that may have influenced “Basileia”?
Torre: Yes, there are many, and I also drew inspiration from the visual arts. I watched a lot of Lucrecia Martel’s work because I love the way she puts the otherworldly in her own cinematic realm. It’s incredible. I also watched a lot of Alice Rohrwacher’s work. She’s a friend, but she’s also a female director that I’m always very inspired by. And I’ve been struck by this film that you probably know, “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” [by Apichatpong Weerasethakul]. This was the cinematic world that I was moving around in while writing the script and before shooting.
Jonas, what was making “Basilea” like from a production standpoint?
Carpignano: Isabella and I, we’ve been living together in Calabria since 2015, and obviously all the films we’ve made, she’s been a big part of. From the start she immediately had a strong attraction toward Aspromonte. I remember the first time she told me about the script was after we’d come back from there. She told me this idea she had about making a movie about nymphs and sort of looking into the organic mythology of this area. And I remember I said to her, “Just write it. That’s an incredible idea. We know the locations. We know the people. I know how much you love this place. Write it.” And the first thing she did, she wrote a feature film. And I remember thinking, “This is great. I don’t know how we’re going to be able to put this together, right now, so let’s see if we can make a short film version of it.”
And literally the next day she had banged out a 12-page script that was an excerpt of the feature. And I thought it was great. So we went and we made it.
And from there, it’s a film that really took off because the feature screenplay got into the Sundance Lab the same year that the short came to Venice, so we had an incredible amount of momentum. Then, we were about to make the film, and COVID totally derailed our plans. So we had to start from scratch once COVID ended, and now we’ve finally made the film that you’ve seen.
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