Alice Rohrwacher: The Pride of European Cinema
Berlin – «Europe is proud of Alice Rohrwacher and it is wonderful to be able to award this prize to a director who is in her forties, who already has such strength and of whom all of Europe can be proud.” As Matthijs Wouter Knol, director of the European Film Awards, presents the Italian filmmaker with an important recognition. The conversation with the director, in front of a small group of Italian journalists, ranges through her cinema starting from her new project: a silent film, “which is very similar to new languages, to TikTok, and therefore can reach young people”.
European Cinema: A Recognizable Genre?
“Yes. And indeed, it is a testimony to the fact that we often talk about Europe for economic reasons, for rearmament, for thoughts of war, while instead being in Europe also means being involved in collaboration, friendship. All the films we make could not exist without this collaboration that was born within the European Union. So there exists, in my opinion, a European cinema in the constitutive sense of how films are made. Perhaps you were asking me if there is a European cinema as a genre, if it is recognizable compared to others. There is certainly a recognizability of European cinema, but the important thing is that it doesn’t become a stereotype. The most beautiful thing, for me, is precisely the idea that these films are made in the meeting of multiple countries, multiple languages, and that there is a common territory. The limit would be to turn it into a genre. Just working in the meeting of different languages is an immense richness for a film: at least this has been our experience.”
Award and Reflections
Receiving such an important award leads you to look forward but also backwards: what reflections does it open on your journey? «I would like to quote a beautiful story called The Stork: there is a man who, in the night, tries to block a flood, he puts bags of earth to dam a dam, stumbling, in a confused way. In the morning, returning home, he sees from the window that this stumbling in the night, this attempt to stop the water, has created a shape: and it is the shape of a stork. It’s a metaphor for life. When you receive an award like this you try to understand the form of what you have done, often stumbling in the night and simply trying to contain a flood. It’s not that, by making one film after another, the path is clear. The need is to stem a loss. But this award makes you wonder what form you left behind. And it also makes you look forward: having already received it, now you can indulge yourself even more.”
New Project: A Silent Film
He is working on a project that has very strong roots in European silent cinema. Does he tell us about it? «It was born from the desire to question the roots of cinema and its primary form, silent cinema. Not so much as the past of sound cinema, but as another narrative possibility. In particular European silent cinema, the cinema of its origins, which did not know it was silent. We would like to make a film by removing fundamental elements of the narrative, such as sound and colour, keeping in our hearts references such as Sjöström, Murnau and a cinema that, one hundred years ago, in the 1920s, was free to experiment, not afraid to dare. The image was his form of existence. It seems very contemporary to me: when I see these films I don’t perceive them as cinema from the past. I believe that today’s world, which bases much of its communication on images, perhaps has more ties with that cinema than with a much talked about cinema.”
Cinema and Music
Silent cinema is linked to music. What role will it have? «There will be a lot of music. For me it has always been fundamental: in the first two films we only used diegetic music. To put on music that comes down from above I had to wait for Lazzaro Happy. Entrusting an entire film to music seems almost more sensible to me than hiding it under the dialogues.”
European Cinema Today
Looking back, do you feel a shape in the work you’ve done? «This year, seeing my colleagues’ films, I have the feeling that there is a common direction. They are very different films, but they all seek a new form of storytelling. It’s nice to feel that there is a line, that needs and desires are shared.” Are there any titles that represent this moment in European cinema well? «I think of Sentimental Value, Sirat, Sound of Falling, the whole five, and then Panahi. They are films that dare to make gestures. It doesn’t matter whether the gesture is perfect: what counts is the intention. It is the intention, the necessity that animates them, that makes us want to continue making necessary films.”
Conclusion
What is cinema for you? «It is the desire to know and love. As Elsa Morante says: “Only he who loves knows”. It is also a desire to imagine a less predictable future. Not to point it out, but to make it desired. If we are not capable of imagining something different, then it cannot happen.” For more information, visit Here