“Why do the Americans play Gucci and Ferrari, and I – rightly – would never get Kennedy?” asks the actor, who is present at the Berlinale as the protagonist of Andrea di Stefano’s film L’ultimo notte di Amore.
is embittered, Pierfrancesco Favino. Maybe even a little angry. “I see the respect that exists abroad for Italian cinema and its professionalism diminishing“, he says in Berlin, on the sidelines of the press meeting for the film The Last Night of Lovepresented at Berlinale in the Berlinale Special section and on release in Italy on March 9of which he is the protagonist.
A Field bean he doesn’t like, and he can’t be blamed, that in an era of great attention to inclusivity and political correctness, there are rules that don’t seem to apply to actors in our country as well. “I see more and more often the roles of Italian characters in large international productions who come to shoot with us go to non-Italian actors”. Field bean mention titles like House of Gucci, Ferrari. She is not taking it out, she specifies, with “the great actors” who play those films and those characters, but, she says, “They would never let me do Kennedy. And no one would ever think of asking an American actor to play Yves Saint Laurent: because the French have set precise limits”.
The current logic is not exactly congenial to Favino, “because I think that an actor should also be able to play an elephant”, he says making a clear paradox, “but if this is the logic, include us too. Instead we Italians are an exception. When you point it out, they tell you that we are not a minority.”
Favino also speaks of great professionals, of workers who, working with large American and international productions, are forced to cover roles far below their competence: “because first there are the Americans, who must have Asian or other assistants, and only afterwards do we we”.
According to Favino, “we have to set limits, even if we risk losing something in terms of international investments, of those who come to us to take advantage of the tax credit. Someone should be interested in this issue, perhaps even at ministerial level. But be careful, because it is not a political problem, it is an industrial problem. A problem related to the loss of respect that I feel and see for our school and our film culture“.
With the opportunity, Field bean also spread the following press release of the UNITA associationwhich brings together actors and actresses from our country:
In Italy, male and female workers in the audiovisual sector have been waiting for months for their national collective agreement to be renewed. The crew, the technicians, the workers and even the stuntmen operate in the absence of shared rules and modern and effective safeguards.
The Italian actresses and actors – unique in Europe – have never even had a category collective agreement establishing rights, duties and minimum wages and this is because the producers’ associations do not intend to sit down and negotiate, effectively preventing the progress of the sector both in terms of industrial development and workers’ rights.
A country that wants to call itself civilized cannot continue to produce cinema and television in this way.
For this reason, the Italian voice actors have already gone on strike and the largest trade association of actresses and actors, UNITA, has decided to make this situation known by supporting trade union mobilization, from today until all rights are obtained. to those who work every day with passion and professionalism to keep alive our imagination, our cinema, the wisdom and culture of our country.
