Fresh Face: ‘Disco Boy’ Director Giacomo Abbruzzese On His Long Journey To Making The Berlin Competition Cut With His First Feature
variety.comNick Vivarelli International Correspondent Paris-based Italian director Giacomo Abbruzzese says making the Berlin Film Festival competition cut with his first feature, “Disco Boy,” which toplines German star Franz Rogowski (“Passages,” ”Undine”), is “certainly a dream come true.” But he also points out that his remarkable debut was a long time coming.
A graduate of several film schools, including France’s prestigious Le Fresnoy, Abbruzzese started developing “Disco Boy” in 2013 following an encounter in a French disco with a classical dancer who had been a soldier. “I realized that beyond their apparent contradiction, these two worlds had a lot in common, especially when it comes to classical ballet,” the director said, citing “the extreme physical exertion and discipline that they both involve.” That chance meeting was just a starting point for the film’s complex narrative, which Abbruzese developed at the Cannes Film Festival’s Cinefondation and during a Clermont-Ferrand Festival residency.
But then the film took 10 years to make. Basically “because of the indie film financing world that we live in,” says Abbruzzese, noting that “Disco Boy,” due to its locations, was an expensive proposition. “It’s partly set in Africa, and I didn’t want to make compromises.
I wanted it to be radical,” he said. “Disco Boy” stars Rogowski as a young Belarusian named Aleksei who, on the run from his past, reaches Paris to enlist in the French Foreign Legion, the military organization that allows any foreigner, even undocumented ones, to be granted a French passport after three years of service.
Read more on variety.com
