News  ·  07 | 08 | 2022

Interview with Luigi Lo Cascio e Alessandro Borghi

Delta | Piazza Grande

Delta was an intense journey, for you and for your character, Osso. 

Luigi Lo Cascio - Michele Vannucci has always talked about travel. He did not propose a film to me, but to do "this thing", indefinite, without precise margins. An experience in places, in a dynamic where you actually live the situation, and then the film itself comes. I arrived later, after a few months I had to chase them, even more, I was catapulted, pulled in. But this submerged being already said something about the story and the characters: being at the mercy of something you don't know until the end. The story tells of discovering oneself in another way and trying to bring something to completion quickly, floundering as little as possible. The slowest research, on the other hand, for which I asked for time to spare, was finding the language. Reading the script it seemed clear to me how my character, an ecologist, spoke Italian, and is truly touched by the place where he is. It was crucial for me to have the time to devote myself to a study that would lead me to find the right colors of the language. 

How did you approach Elijah, a character who fled his territory and lived for years elsewhere, and now forced to return? 

Alessandro Borghi - I have been involved in the project for some time. Michele Vannucci and I are linked by a very strong friendship and great esteem. There was a long preparation. Michele rightly asked us to live there before filming. I went to try to better understand the world of poaching, fishing for catfish. My work on the language required a study of Romanian, since my character left those lands and for many years lived elsewhere. Reviewing the film I saw in the scenes with the ‘Romanian family’ a beautiful truth that made me very happy. I like the fact that everyone sees something different in Delta. I think it's a film about identity, about the search for ourselves, for our place. Elijah cuts the bridges with his past - a background that we almost do not even tell - and when he is forced to return to his place of origin he is confronted again with everything he had tried to eliminate from his memory. Relating to the other characters he discovers what could have been. I found out more about him when we went to the set and I confronted Luigi and Michele, dealing with mud, cold, fish. The best surprise of this experience was then to let things happen. 

From this river, among the submerged fish, ring of discord, emerges a very contemporary feeling: an anger common to many social classes. 

LLC - Despite being a fictional story, Delta tells of real dynamics. There is an existing feeling that acts, but also an anger that is left to erupt. Prior to the events recounted, poaching was punished only as an administrative offense. There was much less attention to crimes against the environment. If you feel abandoned by the state, which does not actually protect the places, but delegates control to private initiative, then it is obvious that then the anger erupts in the most terrible and ungovernable way. 

AB - Delta is an extremely contemporary film, around the corner too, if we make a mistake in voting in Italy on September 25. It is a system that relies on repressed hatred, which, when it explodes, necessarily leads to violence. Listening to the locals, who told us of events from only a few years ago, we realized how there were two communities that initially shouted at each other, then they threatened each other and at some point began to shoot each other. If a dispute is not regulated, it can become uncontrollable. It is a film that has to do with violence and xenophobia, problems that are still current in this historical moment. It seems absurd to me to have to talk again about these issues. Instead we make films, because cinema has a power that in my small way I could experience. Beautiful things can happen by using this tool to talk to people. 

Mauro Donzelli

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