A year after her sister Alice Rohrwacher, director of the film The Wonders, actress and Italian star Alba Rohrwacher has also come to Karlovy Vary. In one day she is accompanying two films, in both cases along with their directors.
Hungry Hearts, for which she won the prized Volpi Cup at last year's festival in Venice, was shot with Saverio Costanzo, just like the picture The Solitude of Prime Numbers, known from the KVIFF programme and Czech cinemas. The title Sworn Virgin, Inspired by the strange Albanian custom whereby it is possible for women to take on a male identify, is the feature directorial debut of Laura Bispuri, whose grandfather worked as a props manager for Roberto Rossellini and Bernardo Bertolucci. "Thank you for the invitation to this special festival. The films presented here are of high quality," Bispuri said, praising KVIFF.
Her film was the only Italian representative competing at the Berlinale this year. "I worked on it for a long time. I fell in love with the book by Elvira Dones, which I then adapted into a film, and I love the main character of the story. If I had to describe it, I would say that it is a path. Not only a geographical one, from the north of Albania to the north of Italy, but a path into the soul," said the filmmaker, who thanks to the Fandango Lab workshop studied for two years under such names as Paolo Sorrentino, Matteo Garrone and Ken Loach.
