It Is Easier for a Camel

Colour, 35 mm
France, Italy, 2003, 110 min
Section: Horizons
Oficiální stránky: www.gemini-films.com

Synopsis

This first directing attempt by well-known actress Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi is strongly autobiographical, although the names of the characters have been changed. She, herself, plays the central figure Federica, whose father, an Italian industrialist, and her very bourgeois mother moved from Italy to Paris during the 1970s for fear of child abduction which, at that time, was a frequent occurrence at the hands of the “Red Brigades”. Federica is studying and is trying to write and lead her own life, while also maintaining her own circle of friends. Nevertheless, she regularly sees her family, who include her unbalanced sister Bianca and her feeble brother Aurelio. Federica, herself, isn’t sure what she wants and what path to choose. On the one hand she is friends with left-wing intellectuals, on the other she feels the need to attend confession and tell the priest about her sinful meetings with a married writer. She has the mind of a revolutionary but takes money for granted; she has no need of it and she is to inherit more when her father, to whom she feels the closest bond, eventually dies. Is she to donate her money to help build a hospital for African children, or should she marry and start a family, or concentrate on her art? Federica is unsure what to do…

About the director

Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi (1964, Turin), thanks to her bi-lingual abilities, is cast in both Italian and French films. She trained as an actress with director Patric Chéreau and attended the drama school L’École des Amandiers in Nanterre, where she gained her first stage experience. She made a name for herself when she played the lead in the psychological drama Normal People Aren’t Exceptional (1993), for which she won a César, the Michel Simon award and a Bronze Leopard at the Locarno IFF. Further international recognition – a Bronze Leopard at the Locarno IFF in 1996 – brought her the role of the baker’s wife in the film Nénette and Boni. Visitors to the Karlovy Vary IFF in 1998 had a chance to see her in the competition film La parola amore esiste by director Mimmo Calopresti, with whom she had already worked on the film La seconda volta (1995), where she appeared opposite Nanni Moretti. She also appeared in films by Noémie Lvovsky, who collaborated with her on the screenplay for It Is Easier for a Camel (2003).