original title:
I calcianti
directed by:
cast:
Guido Caprino, Francesco Scianna, Francesco Arca, Giulia Michelini, Sergio Albelli, Giacomo Gonnella, Nadir Caselli, Branko Djuric, Paolo Cioni, Maurizio Lombardi, Federica Bertolani, Alexey Vorobjov, Sabina Akhmetova
cinematography:
editing:
set design:
costume design:
music:
Aleksey Vorobyov
producer:
Gianfranco Piccioli, Nadezhda Gorshkova
production:
Settima Luna, supported by Ministero della Cultura, Liga Production
country:
Italy/Russia
year:
2015
format:
colour
festivals & awards:
Florence: in the beginning it’s all a shower of flowers, hugs and kisses. Then the game begins and that multicoloured show framed by Piazza Santa Croce, before the marvellous façade of turns into an inferno. The Florentine historical soccer semifinal is being played between the Reds and the Blues and they are beating the living daylights out of each other. Holy cow! It’s a flurry of slaps, coagulated blood, punches, snares, choking, kicks. “The ball! Where’s the ball?” someone shouts. The people in the terrace watch this spectacle, stunned; it seems to astound even the severe gaze of the great poet Dante Alighieri, whose statue dominates from the corner of the square. Everything began in that match. It wasn’t a match as in so many other sports-‐no! We're talking about Florentine historical soccer, an ancient, spectacular, violent sport. A mixture of rugby, all-‐in wrestling, boxing, Graeco-‐Roman wrestling, martial arts and a few notions that found their way to modern soccer. Four stories start here, intertwining with each other, giving rise to a comedy that is bitter, comic and as spectacular as life itself.