Italian filmmakers Silvia Luzi and Luca Bellino have been exploring the lines between fiction and reality.
Following the success of Crater in 2017, a film that garnered critical acclaim and international awards, Luzi and Bellino return with a narrative that delves into the psyche of a young woman trapped in the oppressive monotony of a leather factory in Southern Italy in their latest offering, Luce, which premiered in the competition at the Locarno Film Festival.
The film, produced by the Oscar-nominated Donatella Palermo, once again sees the filmmakers collaborating with Marianna Fontana. Luce unfolds in a bleak, rain-soaked town, where the protagonist's life takes a surreal turn after a sudden inspiration on the beach – flying a drone with a phone behind the walls of prison. As she becomes entangled with a mysterious voice on her cellphone, her world begins to straddle the fine line between desire and delusion.
Luzi and Bellino's approach to storytelling — reshaping their script daily, shooting in real locations, and employing a documentary-like realism — challenges the boundaries between what is real and what is imagined. In Luce, the directors explore themes of identity, alienation, and the haunting effects of modern labor.
Why did you choose to explore themes of identity, absence, and alienation, especially within a working-class environment?
Silvia Luzi: This is a central theme for us. We've touched on it in our previous documentaries, particularly in relation to factories and the working class. We believe this isn't just an issue of the past; it's a very contemporary condition. We're always interested in the relationship between people and power, whether it's within a family, with the state, or in the workplace.
The setting of this film is especially significant because it takes place in a region of Italy where major brands like Gucci and Prada source their leather. The workers, mostly women, work nine-hour days for four euros an hour on production lines. For us, the working class is like a Greek chorus around viewers, and this was important for us to investigate the relationship between people and power.
Luca Bellino: Alienation is a key theme in Luce. We crafted the character of Marianna Fontana to embody this feeling, which drives her to send a phone into a jail using a drone, a desperate attempt to connect with another world, even if it's a false one. This idea of role-playing and lying is something we all engage in, whether through our social media lives or our everyday interactions. It's a way to explore how power affects not just workers in a factory but all of us in different ways.
Luzi: Alienation is the keyword. Because for us, alienation is the mother of weird choices. And this is a very contemporary issue.
Bellino: Even if you're working in front of a computer for eight hours, it's not so different from the Marxist idea of alienation. The factory isn't just a location, it's a symbol of the alienation that permeates modern life.
Luzi: And we did not want use actors.
They are all non-professional actors?
Luzi: All of the workers in the film, except for Marianna Fontana, are real workers. They had no idea Marianna was an actress at first. She worked there in disguise for a month to understand the environment fully. So she had also enjoyed the actual treatment from the supervisor the workers received, being told she is the worst.
Bellino: Because she had to know the real conditions. She was not supposed to act as a worker, she was supposed to be the worker. And then we could shoot the film. She accepted the role only by reading the first five scenes.
So the full script was ready?
Luzi and Bellino: Yes, we had the script.
Luzi: But nobody acting in the film saw the script.
Bellino: We wrote the script but we finalized it with their words and their dialect.
How does this work?
Bellino: We approved the script with them during the rehearsals.
Luzi: And we changed the script. We always work like this, adjusting the script during shooting or rehearsing. When you have the luck to work with non-professionals, you become enriched and they will keep giving more than you could imagine. Working with non-professionals means respecting them and taking the good things, improving the script with their real words and letting them become the characters.
How did you do it? Did you receive notes on the script from the non-professional cast?
Luzi: Non-professionals did not read the script. Nobody from the cast reads the script.
Never?
Luzi: Never ever. When we work on scenes, we have the draft of dialogues. But during the rehearsals, we fix the script.
And this is before the shooting or during?
Luzi and Bellino: Before and during the shooting.
Bellino: We shoot chronologically. Because non-professionals need it to build their characters.
I guess then there was a lot of improvisation on the set.
Luzi and Bellino: Absolutely not.
Bellino: Technically, that is a very difficult thing to pull off.
So by the end of a day, do you check rushes?
Luzi: Yes.
And nothing needs to be redone?
Luzi: No, because we rehearsed it. And by the shooting, we knew each other so well, that working together was like a dance. We have known them for months. I knew perfectly Gina, Roberta. I really knew them and they really knew us. So it was simple.
But to arrive to that point was not that simple, it was a lot of work, you had to teach them. There was no space for improvisation. But sometimes, it happened that they forgot the words or did not have the right timing, and Marianna learned to rectify the situation. She became the third director inside the scene. She became very sensitive to understand the scenes.
When you say Marianna was the third director in the scene, does it mean that non-professionals did not see you or the film crew when shooting?
Bellino: Absolutely.
Luzi: The crew is also the family. They knew perfectly Paolo Benvenuti and Daniele Sosio of sound, they are friends. And also DoP Jacopo Caramella stayed with us throughout the whole preparation.
By the beginning of shooting, everybody knew everybody. We have been having dinners and lunches and we stayed in the factory hours and hours. Because we decide to not stop the production line when we were shooting our film there.
Bellino: And among the non-professional actors is also the actual owner of the factory. To not stop the production line was very important for us, otherwise it would be fake. And the leather you see in the film is right now in a Gucci jacket.
Has the owner seen the film?
Luzi: He saw it at the premiere, but he watched the monitor during the shooting. But the factory is an archetype. We do not denounce the conditions, it´s a mental condition. But the film is fiction.
Is it? Because you implied that it is a combination of fiction and reality.
Luzi: You do not know. We do not know. We want you to not know.
Bellino: Even if you watch the film and you hear the voice in the phone or the cat, you do not really know if they are real. It all can be just in the head of the protagonist.
Luzi: And this little line between what is and what is not real is important for us like the relationship with power.
Why are you fascinated with this line?
Bellino: Because it is a key to interpret our time. Our time is true or false, it´s full of fake news that became true.
Luzi: And it is also a question of identity. And it is very fascinating to investigate this little line through cinema. The audience expects something and you give them something else.
You wanted to subvert the expectation?
Bellino: We wanted something that is more sensorial to watch a film. To enter the film through the style and sound.
You also use a lot of second-person shots. It was because of the imerssiveness of the watching.
Bellino: And to not be comfortable. You have to feel the same feelings the characters are feeling.
Luzi: And in the classic fiction, you have a sensorial watching so you are entering the reality. So you can make the fiction became real.
Bellino: And what we are doing is opposite to documentary filmmaking.
But you are utilizing some documentary aspects in your film. You do not consider LUCE a docu-fiction hybrid?
Bellino: Absolutely not, it´s the opposite. Documentary starts in reality and turns into something fictional. Instead we start with a strong fiction, strong preparation, string lines to arrive to the feeling of reality. But it's done in a string fiction way and this is our kind to experiment and work.
Luzi: And this is our way to give us and you the sensation and taste of reality. This kind of factory you see in the movie exists, people in jail and alone exist, and whatever they have done, because dignity is dignity, they still exist, the boss in the factory that you have to ask the permission to go to the bathroom exist, family exists. And this is reality.
How do you two work together as co-directors? How does that work?
Bellino: We fight. [laughs]
Luzi: We never watch the monitor during shooting; we stay on set. It looks like a comedy on the set. Sometimes one says “Stop, great!” and the other is like “No, steady boy!”. But have the same vision.
Don't the disagreements kill the mood?
Luzi: No, they knew us from the beginning and we always do it like this.
Are you negotiating between yourselves?
Bellino: No, we start to shoot and we shoot until we are both satisfied.
And in the editing room?
Bellino: We already know what takes we are going to use.
Luzi: Always. We only shoot a few scenes in all our movies. That´s why it is quite simple for us in the editing room. Our preparation enables us to arrive to the editing room basically with the film done.
Nothing unexpected happens on the set?
Luzi: Of course, For instance, there's a scene toward the end — the family scene where Uncle Lozeo starts smiling in a particular way. It was completely genuine, and we decided to keep it because it perfectly captured the essence of the 'family monster.' It was something unexpected, yet it fit so perfectly.
Another example is during the fight scene between the workers. They were supposed to argue, but they added their own lines, things that are typical for them. One of the characters said something like, "Yeah, always the same litany”. I could not write the thing because nobody speaks like this. It was so unexpected, but it worked perfectly.
Each time we captured something like that, we used it. There was a scene where the photographer and Mariana were in the car, and a motorbike appeared out of nowhere, going the wrong way. The rider said something like, "Look at this idiot, going the wrong way!" It was real — just a random person making a mistake. We decided to keep that take because it added a layer of authenticity.
So you're open to whatever happens on set?
Luzi: Absolutely. You have to be open to the situations that arise because they bring so much richness to the work. If you're not open, you miss out on these opportunities.
Do you divide duties on set?
Bellino: We do everything together — everything. If there's a need to talk to one of the non-professional actors, either Sylvia or I will handle it. We're not tied to specific roles. One moment, Sylvia might take charge; the next, it might be me. It's all about creation.
Luzi: We created this sense of family before we even started shooting. And I don't just mean that in a figurative sense; we really are like a family. Coming from a background in documentaries, this way of working feels natural to us. We might not be perfect, but we create a sense of family on set.
Bellino: But if we have to shout, we shout.
Luzi: I can become a Satan in a moment [laughs].
How do you find the experience in going from documentaries to fiction filmmaking?
Luzi: For us, there is not a big difference.
Bellino: We did the same job on documentaries that we did on Luce. The only real difference might be with the extras, but overall, we apply the same principles. We stayed with the characters. The process doesn't really change.
Luzi: We decided to confront ourselves with fiction, but using our documentary methods. What some people might call a hybrid, but for us it is not a hybrid, we see as just our way of working, bringing our documentary approach into the structure of fiction and letting them contaminate each other.
We first tried this with Crater, our first feature, which many people thought was a documentary. It wasn’t, but it drew heavily from our documentary experience. For example, when we made On the Art of War, a documentary about the last working-class fight in Milan's factories, we worked closely with the workers, and we rewrote the documentary with them.
During the scenes in Crater, we rewrote parts of the script with the father, Rosario, and his daughter. The method was the same because, in a sense, documentaries are also written. Observational documentaries, where you just let the camera roll, are a political choice.
But when you choose where to place the camera, what to include, and how to edit, you're already shaping the reality you're presenting. So, nothing is entirely real; there's always a layer of interpretation.
Why do you think that topic about workers' rights is so relevant in Italy right now?
Luzi: The topic isn’t just hot in Italy.
Bellino: The working class has changed significantly. In the past, workers were politically well-prepared. Now, that's no longer the case. We have unions, strikes, but no fights.
So this is your political statement?
Bellino: But it's not about saying that workers need to rise up in revolution. Rather, the tragedy is that the idea of revolution seems impossible to them now.
Before, there was at least the hope or the imagination of a revolution, even if it was unlikely to succeed. Today, workers start with the mindset that they’ve already lost, so they just focus on buying the next iPhone.
Luzi: This new generation of workers doesn’t dream of revolts.
Bellino: Our statement is that workers shouldn’t be afraid to acknowledge they’re in a form of slavery and recognize they have an enemy. If you don't recognize your enemy, you can’t fight. Today, many in the working class, whether in Europe or Asia, don’t even see their situation as something to resist against. They’ve accepted it as normal.
he working class has been diverted into fighting among themselves, rather than uniting against those who truly oppress them. This is the tragedy of our times. In Italy, it's especially evident, where workers now often vote for right-wing parties.
Luzi: And for them, the enemy is not their boss that exploits them but people from other countries that are supposedly coming to stela their jobs. So it turns into a war between the poor. And that´s also result of the loss of dignity.