Luca Guadagnino continues his visionary stamp of approval on rising artists — like Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Hailey Gates’ “Atropia” or recent arthouse favorite “April” from director Dea Kulumbegashvili — with another festival favorite newcomer. Giovanni Tortorici, who brought his writing/directing feature debut “Diciannove” to the Venice Horizons section last year, is Guadagnino’s latest find. And he’s about the U.S. audiences’ find, too, as this restless coming-of-ager about a reckless young man is coming to stateside theaters on July 25. IndieWire shares the exclusive trailer. Watch in the video above.
Here’s the synopsis: “A bold, brash and unflinching coming-of-age drama, ‘Diciannove‘ (the film’s title translates to ‘nineteen’ in Italian) follows the highs and lows of a restless youth as it collides headlong into the concrete realities of adulthood when Leonardo (Manfredi Marini), a teenager from Palermo leaves home for the first time. His studies land him in Siena, by way of London, where he clashes with his instructor, the curriculum, and most chaotically, with himself.” (Read IndieWire’s review here.)
Guadagnino discovered Gen Z Sicilian filmmaker Giovanni Tortorici when he worked as an assistant director on Guadagnino’s HBO miniseries “We Are Who We Are.” Tortorici’s slippery debut “Diciannove” is an exuberantly directed coming-of-age story about a 19-year-old (hence the title) on a journey from a dead-end stint at business school to discovering his love of the Italian classics — and beautiful men and women.
Leonardo will remind you of the great coming-of-age characters, like Jean-Pierre Léaud as Antoine Doinel in the films of François Truffaut, as Tortorici crafts a bildungsroman about his hero’s sentimental and literary education. He’s got strong opinions about filmmakers, including Pasolini — whose “Salò” Leonardo jerks off to in a scene that plants the seed for a much darker film beneath the surface — and is eventually labeled as someone incel-adjacent by a literary mentor. Leonardo’s sexuality is also ambiguous, with an interest in men and women hinted at, and also a fascination with a group of Siena teenagers who you can’t tell if he wants to fuck them, kill them, or be them. At one point, Leonardo looks up Justin Bieber’s nudes, which the filmmakers used without any permission or clearance, knowing the pop star will probably never see this film.
But Tortorici doesn’t necessarily identify with the darker impulses you might read into the character, while explaining in an IndieWire interview at Venice last year that this film is torn directly from the pages of his own life. Look out for “Diciannove” in theaters from Oscilloscope July 25.
