12/04/2024 - Set during the American Civil War, the first fiction film by the director of What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire? will be premiered in the Un Certain Regard section

Roberto Minervini is making his fiction-film debut with The Damned, set during the American Civil War, and audiences will be able to see it as a world premiere at the 77th Cannes Film Festival (14-25 May), where the film has been selected for Un Certain Regard. The sixth feature by the director of Stop the Pounding Heart [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (a Special Screening at Cannes in 2013 and winner of the David di Donatello Award for Best Documentary in 2014), The Other Side [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Roberto Minervini
film profile] (in Un Certain Regard in 2015) and What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? [+see also:
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trailer
interview: Roberto Minervini
film profile] (in competition at the 75th Venice Film Festival) is an Italian-US-Belgian-Canadian production staged by Paolo Benzi for Okta Film, and by Denise Ping Lee and Roberto Minervini for Pulpa Film, together with Rai Cinema (Paolo Del Brocco), in co-production with Michigan Films (Alice Lemaire and Sébastian Andres).

Minervini also penned the screenplay, which unfolds in winter 1862. In the midst of the Civil War, the US Army sends a regiment of volunteers to the west, tasked with reconnoitring and gaining control of uncharted lands. The mission proves to be too much for this handful of brothers in arms, making them question the very meaning of this voyage towards the borderlands.

“After many films that were conceived in that hybrid space known as ‘creative documentary’, for me, The Damned represents a new challenge: a fictional, historical, period film, but without sacrificing any of the realism, immediacy or intimacy of my previous works,” stated the director, who was born in the Marche, Italy, but has lived in the USA for years. “I hope that The Damned will be able to surprise people at Cannes as much as it did me and the other people who made it.”

The DoP is Carlos Alfonso Corral (a focus puller on his previous films), the editor is Marie-Hélène Dozo (who has already worked on his previous movies, as well as on Tori and Lokita [+see also:
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interview: Joely Mbundu
interview: Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne
film profile], The Restless [+see also:
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interview: Joachim Lafosse
film profile] and The Man Who Sold His Skin [+see also:
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interview: Kaouther Ben Hania
film profile], among others), and the sound recordist is Bernat Fortiana Chico. The sound editing is overseen by Ingrid Simon, the original score is composed by Carlos Alfonso Corral, the sound mix is by Thomas Gauder, the colourist is Natalia Raguseo, the production designer is Denise Ping Lee, and the line producers are Francesca Vittoria Bennett and Biliana Grozdanova.

The Damned was co-produced by BeTV, in conjunction with Stregonia, with support from MiC – General Directorate of Film and Audiovisual, the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre, Shelter Prod, the Belgian Tax Shelter and ING, the Film Commission Torino Piemonte, the Friuli Venezia-Giulia Audiovisual Fund, the federal tax credit programme of Canada (Cavco) and the provincial tax credit programme of Québec (Sodec), in collaboration with Kaibou Production (Canada).

The film’s international sales have been entrusted to Les Films du Losange.

(Translated from Italian)