Donatello’s David next to the urn with the ashes of Mattia Torre, in a corner of the living room of the house in Testaccio where Francesca welcomes us, his wife, and Emma, the 11-year-old daughter. born on 11 September, the day of the attack on the Twin Towers. Friends say Emma is a Tower that is worth two. It was she, Emma, who made everyone cry with her speech of thanks for Sons, of which her father was the screenwriter, who died at the age of 47, in 2019, at the height of his artistic and human maturity. Bravo dad! You managed to win this award even though you are no longer there. a film about lonely families and children who are born. For this – said Emma – I also thank the midwives who give birth to new lives and the doctors who are committed to not letting people fly away. Mamma Francesca is a midwife. Mattia was one of the inventors of the cult series Boris. It was not taken for granted that it was Emma talking, even if the film is called Sons.
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Francesca, how did you decide who should speak?
Emma takes your breath away when she speaks, she inherited it from Mattia. When they proclaimed him the winner, Valerio Mastandrea who was a great friend of Mattia turned to me with a look as if to say, did you see? unbelievable. To Emma I said: thank whoever you want. And I – Emma intervenes – I thought about my old friends, to remember them all I connected them with a mental scheme.
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How did you guys meet?
Before becoming a midwife I used to act and often go to the theater. I saw “In the middle of the sea” which was a text by Mattia and I thought of “Giovane Holden”: when you like a book you would like to have a beer with the author. We met in 2005 through friends in her home. He looked at me from afar. There was a coming and going of people, it was four in the morning to see movies, to joke and drink beer. One day at the seaside he said to me: I really want to kiss you. I said no. Then I hug you. It was 15 years of love. We were accomplices in all respects, the meeting of soul mates from which Emma and Nico were born. We also quarreled, and at the beginning as dad wasn’t so present, he got forested a lot, he said that at night it was easier for me to wake up as a woman!
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He talks about it as if …
As if it were between us. For my birthday Emma organized a treasure hunt with photos of Mattia. He had already metastasized to a kidney when he learned about it, he had to live two years and instead it was four because he was Mattia, he lived the disease positively, writing a lot in the last period, without giving in to despair.
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In The Vertical Line, the TV series set in an oncology ward, he talked about s?
Yes, when you are hospitalized you feel alone with the disease, Mattia had forty friends who were waiting for him when he had an operation. He wanted to tell the loneliness that he did not experience. The neighbor in the bed had a Pasolini face, like a murderer, but it was a piece of bread, Calabrian with clothes in a plastic bag. He set up a dialogue that took place between us. “He asked me: is there something you know that I don’t know? I replied: Do you want to know everything? So let’s choose it now ”.
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He wrote about fatherhood knowing he would experience it too little. He conveyed happiness, but he didn’t want to talk about “Sons”, he knew he wouldn’t see it. He wrote it and indicated Giuseppe Bonito as director in his place.
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Why did he become the alter ego of a generation?
he managed to hit the neuroses with surgical perfection, he observed reality and overturned it in a never rhetorical way, it was almost a laboratory. He said the truth makes you laugh.
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When he knew he was sick …
In front of a pizza he thought about what his funeral should be like, in his church which was the Ambra Jovinelli theater. He wanted to be remembered by his friends, Valerio Mastandrea, Valerio Aprea, Pietro Sermonti… We laughed and cried, it was a triumph. Mattia had no family of origin, an only child, his father died, his mother lives in Switzerland. His safety net was us and his friends. He said his ashes had to be displayed with a glass of Chardonnay. Mattia was a man out of the ordinary who laughed at illness and death.
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Until the very end?
In recent months he did not speak, except for archetypes, one I pinned on the fridge: Today I had a connection with the transformation in our life. He had a conscious look, as if he had silenced his rational side. It was hollowed out, unrecognizable. The day before he died he said to me: can I go ?.
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Francesca, didn’t she feel anger?
S sure. But thanks to him I learned that it is useless. Like fear. I am also angry that he was unable to collect an award he was very fond of.
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Emma, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about dad?
He had the ability not to break down and to convey happiness.
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This whole house, which Mattia has never lived in and where great harmony reigns, speaks of him, the pen who had the talent to live.
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May 12, 2021 (change May 12, 2021 | 23:25)
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