Eitan Pitigliani explores the issue of grief in his new short film SISSY, inspired by his own life experience.
Film And TV Now spoke with the film-maker about the short film.
FILM AND TV NOW: We understand this story was inspired by your own family loss. How much of the short is autobiographical?
EITAN PIGLITIANI: Yes, Sissy is a story I came up with after a very long process I had to go through to get myself together after the loss of my mom.
She was everything to me, truly, and it’s been extremely hard for me to go back to the real world after her passing… a world without her. When At first, I was totally hiding from the outside world, then little by little I started opening up a little but it was still incredibly difficult to feel that I was even alive… then one day came a little girl, Dea Lanzaro, that I knew from before, since she was 4, but never had the chance to experience…
I met her again a few weeks after my mom passed, and Dea (her name in Italian means Goddess) is actually the little girl that stars in the film in the role of Sissy. In the real life, she was the one who made me realize that not only was I throwing away my life, but also that I wasn’t doing good to her and to all she had ever done forme. It’s truly thanks to this little girl and her magical powers if I was able to feel alive, and ultimately, to start writing and directing again.
It’s all my mom ever wanted, and this little girl made me see that, in the worst and darkest moment, and made it possible for me to stand up and face the beauty of life… no matter what… Life must be honored everyday… Unbelievable that it was a 7 year-old to say all this…
FTVN: How much of a catharsis has making this movie been for you?
EP: Catharsis, that’s exactly what this whole story must be about, even though I didn’t start writing it thinking of it this way.
I just wanted to give a voice to my inner feelings and emotions, to share it with the audience, ‘cause we all have someone we love. And I believe that there’s nothing that can win over real love. No matter what… love is love… and, even if death is pretty tough, love is way stronger, and it’s thanks to it, and to the memories we keep in our heart, that we can feel our dearests always within us…
This is the idea behind Sissy: that love is stronger than death, and when a person dies, the game is not over: that person may very well be alive, somewhere else, having fun, perhaps in the shape of a little girl like Sissy, watching over us… Death is not the end of things… I believe, and I truly hope so…
FTVN: You deal with the bonds of mother and son in this film and also the power of love. How important are both to you?
EP: Just like I said, I feel that we are the product, the result, of the people surrounding us, and the love we share with them… I think it was Saint Augustine that said that quite a while ago… and to me, my mom was the most important part of my life… She was my life… And ultimately, she gave me life, like all moms do… and she did everything for me.
There’s so many touchy things I know about her life, before I was born… about the way she moved from the outskirts of a city near Naples, and came to Rome… with nothing but the will of changing her life and realizing something she could be proud of… She was a self-made woman, and after a lot of events I can’t share here – even though some I put in the film – she made it, and became the head of nurses at a very prestigious hospital in Rome.
Then she had me – after 7 miscarriages… but she fought harder than life’s events… and she made it! Love, that’s the answer. She took care of me all the time, non-stop, since I was born, and there’s nothing more magical than the way she looked at me, happy to see me alive, growing up the way she dreamt, and that I was able to do things she never had the chance to experience in her life…
She wanted me to be realized, to tell stories, and become a director… she even gave me some money for my first short films… and even in the worst moment, after she discovered about her illness, that only lasted a few months… She begged me to go to Hollywood and attend a festival where my short film was screening at. I tried to fight with her – she was at the hospital for a random check-up -but there was no way I could ever win with her… It just pops up in my mind that one of the very last things she said to me was one day, when I entered her hospital room, and when she saw me, she smiled and waved her hands in the air, screaming “Hollywood”…
I didn’t know she was that sick, after several months I lived back to back with her, cooking for her, going to visit all the possible doctors in Italy to see if there was something to be done to help her… After all those months, I was away from here just two days… She asked me that… Her screaming “Hollywood” is one of the last things I remember she said, and after that, I never had the chance to speak to her again… but I know what she thinks, and what she had in mind…
As a mom who loves her child more than her life, she wanted me to go, to be away from her in that moment, and she passed to a better life, happy to think that her son wasn’t witnessing her passing, but instead, he was faraway, in the place of her dreams… She sent me there, and this I know from talking to a nurse who took care of her the last night, and she was so proud that I was in Hollywood, and that she managed to send me away… I can’t think of a higher form of love… I miss her so much… Out of all this came Sissy, that is my tribute to her… and to all the love she gave me… the power of love…
FTVN: How long did it take to write the script?
EP: Coming up with the story and writing the screenplay didn’t take much… probably a week or so… but it was coming from the heart.
Ever since I met that Dea, I started seeing life from a different point of view, and thinking of my mom as a little girl, having fun, and swimming in the sea of the afterlife… That’s the moment in which I started jotting down my ideas… and I immediately shared with the Vincenzo Vivenzio, an extraordinary actor that I knew from previous experience, who plays the lead in Sissy, and then with here, Dea.
She was only 7 at the time, but was able to catch the meaning and the power of the story and the message I wanted to bring across with the film. I didn’t tell her the whole thing, of course, but she got me right away, and from that moment on, she pushed me to finish the script and to go for it and make the movie… as a special gift to my mom… but not only…
Sissy, in fact, is a gift to all the moms in the world, and to their children… and probably even more… I see it as a tribute to our loved ones, to the love they gave us, and I want to share it with as many people as possible… for we all love someone, and feeling that someone is never gone for real… that helps a lot processing their passing, and their absence… They must be alive, somewhere, and never really left us for good… physically yes, sure… but their power, their love, their strength…. Are with us, forever and ever.
I must thank the people that made me realize that this story, once written, had to be told and turned into a film… that it was urgent, for me, an not only… above all, there was a special woman, her name is Barbara, that I met long ago, with whom I share a lot… When she said that the script was breathtaking and a must see, that’s when I felt that I had to go for it and do all I could to make it happen… in memory of my mom.
FTVN: Tell us about your cast.
EP: I am so happy about the cast of incredible actors I had the chance to work with on this project.
First the lead, Vincenzo Vivenzio, who did a very intense and thorough preparation – his role is really complex, since he’s a guy who leaves everything and runs away, from his father, from his house, and from himself, and decides to go live on the street, among the homeless, to escape reality and, in a way, feel closer to his mother. I’m impressed by the work Vincenzo did, and it’s thanks to him if I was able to put onscreen all my inner feelings, that I wanted to exteriorize to the fullest in order to give life to a special character, Luca…
I didn’t decided to go on the street, but my grief was, and still is, so profound, so deep, that I thought it would be the best way to portray it, and also honorable to give this character an additional layer, of a guy that chooses to live amongst the homeless, and is not ashamed or worried by that but, on the contrary, feels they are the answer to his internal pain… the opening image of the camera wandering under the bridge in search of the protagonist, who’s sleeping on the ground… touches me every time I see it.
It’s really intense, and I was so impressed of the help the homeless people who were there gave us when we were filming the scene under the bridge. One of them was actually willing to help us keep the passers-by away from the set, to help us have the best shots possible. Really amazing.
Along with Vincenzo, I had the pleasure to work with Fortunato Cerlino, who plays the role of the father, a man who wants to move on and forget about the past, in order to feel alive again.
He is an established and very well know actor in italy, especially for his role in Gomorrah the series, where he played a mob boss. I knew him from before and that is what I needed for the role of the father, a tough man, who hides his emotions behind a mask, and unchains his heart only when he sees that is soon feels better and has completed his journey… a father who lives only if he sees his soon happy…
Mirella D’Angelo was the candy on the cake, a marvelous actress that I met a few years ago at the premiere of my previous short at Alice nella Città – Rome Film Fest, and from that moment on, she conquered me with her grace and her astonishing beauty… In Sissy she plays a key role that I can’t talk much about or it would spoiler the story, but I couldn’t have a better actress than Mirella for that real… She’s the image of life, of freedom, of joy…
And then there’s my little girl, Dea, the one who inspired the whole creation of this film, and who was really a God send… She was so impressive on set when, after the first “action” of her life, she jumped into the scene and started acting like she had always been there, like she had done that for ages… and she was only 7 at the time…
Something that swept me off my feet and that left me breathless was one day when she came up with an expression that my mom used to say back then… I asked Dea’s mom who might have told her or where she could have possibly heard that… We investigated for days… nobody told her, and what’s weird is that nobody really says those words nowadays… but Dea did…
I was so amazed that I stopped asking around, and instead started thinking that this whole thing must be coming from somewhere else, as if a higher power was watching over us.
FTVN: Tell us about your production team.
EP: The team behind Sissy is really fantastic.
First of all Martina Borzillo, the producer, CEO of Movi Production… she read the story and said yes in less than no time… I share a lot with her and I found a very special person, and friend, in her… It’s thanks to her and her vision as a producer if I was able to get this film off the ground and make this gift to my mom…
And I am so very happy that I was able to involve the best professionals in the Italian industry, from editor Marco Spoletini (“Gomorrah the film”, “Pinocchio”, “Dogman”, for which he won 2 David di Donatello), to the make-up artist and special effects designer Vittorio Sodano (2-time Oscar nominee for Mel Gibson “Apocalypto” and for Paolo Sorrentino’s “Il Divo”, and winner of 2 David di Donatello), then the young extremely talented cinematographer Antonio De Rosa, the costume designer Eva Coen, the digital colorist Walter Volpatto (“Green Book”, “Interstellar”, “Moonfall”), along with the Israeli award-winning composer Avi Belleli and, last but not least, my soulmate, the marvelous artist and choreographer Anna Cuocolo, who was the very first person to read the script before I shared it with the main actors, and it was her unbelievable artistic vision that gave live to Sissy’s character…
Anna was able to transfer the little girl my mom’s emotional world, her gestures and body language… She knew my mom from before, but went so deep down that I really feel this film couldn’t have been the same without Anna… She created Sissy, along with her dancing, her moves, her wisdom…
When I saw the first rehearsal of the dance scene, when Sissy appears on screen for the first time, I was so mesmerized that I got teary-eyed and couldn’t talk for like an hour… Anna is great artist, and made my mom become a fairy princess who bounces everywhere, running up and down the room, giving life to my mom’s inner world, and her most hidden desires…
FTVN: Where did you shoot and for how long?
EP: We filmed Sissy in Rome, for a week… it was amazing to wander around the city and picture the protagonist’s world, paying attention to the details of the life of someone who chooses to live on the street.
We shot down a bridge, and in one of the most beautiful neighborhood in Rome, Trastevere, to which I’m very attached to, cause I was born very close-by… Whereas the scenes at the beach were filmed in Fiumicino, which is a very special place to me, the very last where I saw my mom happy the summer before she got sick, and that’s where I had the last, and probably best, memories with her.
It was really intense to film there, especially the final scene. I also used a rock where she used to sit all the time, with her feet in the water, happy while staring at the sea.
FTVN: You have studied at both the London and New York Film Academies. How influential have both institutions been in your development as a film-maker?
EP: I feel like I have two souls, one Italian and the other American, and I am so grateful for having had the chance to study directing in both New York and London. I wouldn’t be the same as a director if I hadn’t studied in these Academies, that gave me so much strength and artistic freedom, and so many wonderful teachings…
I love Italy, but studying abroad, especially in the US and the UK, made me the director I am today… My mom was very happy when I decided to study abroad and to start this journey, and she was my first supporter… she believed so much in me… and now I have to do good to thank her of all she’s done for me. I can’t see myself without the energy she gave me, and I can’t see myself without all that my studies in the US taught me in terms of love, aesthetic, and ability to dream…
I’ll be forever grateful towards my mom for the fact that she, and my dad as well, made it possible for me to study in the US. And she was very happy when she saw my last to short films, one of which stars Ed Asner (God bless him) and it’s thanks to my mom if I was able to write a story that Ed loved and accepted to star in in a very special role.
My mom saw that film a few months before she found out about her illness, and I’m so moved that I was able to make her happy… I have a picture of her watching the film in front of the computer… and she was very proud…
FTVN: Your first short film IN THIS LIFE received a letter of praise from the President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano. How prestigious was this honor and how did it affect you personally?
EP: That was really the very first time I filmed something… I wrote the story, which was about the relationship between a father and his son after the earthquake in L’Aquila, a marvelous city in Central Italy.
I still remember the emotion at the first screening before an audience, when the film was introduced by the Italian president of the Nastri D’Argento (Golden Ribbons) Laura Delli Colli, who walked on stage, holding a letter that had just arrived and that I wasn’t aware of… and when she said it was coming from the President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano.
I started shaking, feeling the shivers down my spine, and my heart pounding like there was no tomorrow… that was my start as a director…
FTVN: Would you like to expand on the themes and conflicts explored in this short into a feature film ideas?
EP: That would be amazing, also because it came from the heart, and I believe that something magical happened when I started having this vision… it would be love to give life to a screenplay based on the short version of Sissy, and to expand the story.
In the script of the short film, there’s a few hints of my mom’s life before me, about her childhood, when she was sent to boarding school because her parents, my grandparents, didn’t have enough money to take care of all the children they had. My mom was the youngest, and she was the one that had to go away…
She grew up, raised by the nuns, and then moved from her hometown to Rome, after which she started working as a nurse and married my dad… but above all, I would love to expand the theme of the afterlife, of that garden shrouded in light, with waterfalls and seas everywhere around, where one can finally feel free and have fun…just like Sissy… joyful… that would be a great story to tell on the big screen.
FTVN: Who and what are your key cinematic influences and what was the spark that led you to become a film-maker in the first place?
EP: I love cinema, when it’s honest, humble, coming from the heart, and true…
I like when directors and screenwriters portray human contradictions, conflicts, flaws, even the most terrible ones, if they do it open-heartedly… that’s when life becomes cinema, or probably cinema becomes life… and we can’t really live without it…
I am Italian, so Fellini, Ettore Scola, and Vittorio De Sica have been and still are my main symbolic mentors… I grew up with their films, and soon started watching American movies, falling in love with them… But I also adored watching pictures from Europe…
Among the titles that inspired me the most and still resonate in me, the first ones that come to my mind are definitely “Brokeback Mountain” (I love Ang Lee), all Almodovar’s cinema, and also “Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran” (when I think about true and boundless love I always have Omar Sharif’s character in my mind)… same thing for Gus Van Sant’s “Finding Forrester” and “Good Will Hunting”…
I could go on and on for hours, for there’s so many other movies that inspired me and still inspire me today… I love movies, and I feel that sometimes they can be as strong as life and stay with you forever….
FTVN: What issues and themes are you keen to explore in your future work?
EP: I love stories that come from the heart, stories that give a voice to human frailty, to people contradictions, flaws and shortcomings… most of the times due to our incredibly insane need for love.
Love is all that matters, and sometimes the search for love is what generates all the dynamics of life at heart… besides life itself, who happens as we are busy doing things, and most of the times decides by itself, on our behalf, making us fall into situations we wouldn’t expect, and that we must face in order to survive… it’s hard to say… when I come up with an idea, or when something I hear or I’m presented with catches me, usually a bell rings, and I am right away thrown in the middle of the storm…
That’s when the process starts, just right there, instantly… I begin with the story arc, the main character’s features and facets, their inner world, and I just keep going until the script is ready.
FTVN: Who would you love to collaborate with in the future?
EP: I love this question, even though there’s so many people and great artists I would love to work with, and work for.
Music is really essential in my vision of Cinema, and life of course… I have always been in love with Gustavo Santaolalla, the Argentinian composer of Babel and Brokeback Mountain, and of many other films… There ain’t a day that goes by that I don’t listen to Iguazù, that is like a mantra to me… an astonishingly beautiful track that captures the essence of life, its soul, and that is to me like a sign of God…
I listen to it every single day… it give me power to face life and its complexity. My composer Avi Belleli is incredible, I love his music, and I am so happy to have him on Sissy, and I would definitely love to do other projects with him, as well as with Paolo Vivaldi, with whom I started off with as a director with my first short films, among which Like a Butterfly with Ed Asner…
This is only regarding Music…. Talking about actors, I am so madly in love with them, they’re angels that come from the Heavens, just like Dea in Sissy, and every movie has their perfect actors for it… I can’t name one, they’re so many. A guilty pleasure would be working with Miley Cyrus. I still remember listening to one of her last songs “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart”, when I was on the plane, going back from LA to Rome, and that tune was in my headphones all the time…. It was my mom last day, and that song, in a way, helped me heal the pain a little.
FTVN: We understand you are in preparation for your debut feature. Tell us a bit more about it.
EP: Yes, and this new film, my debut, is dedicated to my mom, once again, it could never be otherwise.
The title is E POI CHISSA’ (“AND THEN, WHO KNOWS” translated in English) and it’s the story of a friendship between a young guy, who just lost his mother, and an old woman, who was a painter but then gave up and started living a “normal life”…
These two damned souls bump into each other one day, and become inseparable: for the young man soon discovers that he shares something very powerful with the woman, who is sick too, just like his mom, and decides to help get out of her comfort zone, pushing her to go after her dream instead of going back to her “shitty life”.
He makes her feel alive again… before it’s too late… I am so happy I have a wonderful actress onboard, who will play the lead in the film, and I am also very happy of the people that I have with me on this journey, among whom my new talent agent Daniela Di Santo at Moviement, one of the best Italian talent agencies.
She is a very special woman, and having such a special person with me on this journey gives me so much strength…
I can’t wait to make this new film and share it with the audience. It’s a story I wrote before Sissy, in the very first days without my mom… and every time I read the script, I get so emotional that I really can’t wait to finally film it… And I’m sure it’ll be magical…
FTVN: Finally, what are you most proud of about this short film?
EP: I would say everything…
I fought with all the strength I had – and it wasn’t easy at all – to make this film the way it is, and I am so grateful for the help I had from many professionals… at all levels… And I’m so happy to start this journey with the World Premiere at the Oscar Qualifying 46th Cleveland International Film Festival.
It makes me so very proud that I was able to make this film come true, thanks to the wonderful people that surround Sissy, that can now travel and be seen by the audience around the world… Giving life to this film makes me feel like a better person, and a better director, and it’s really the only way I have to keep communicating with my mom and, in a way, to keep her alive…
