Roberto Minervini’s Cannes-Bound ‘The Damned’ Debunks Heroism of War, Says Director – Watch Teaser (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian-born Texas-based director Roberto Minervini is known for a distinguished career making documentaries including his so-called Texas trilogy comprising “The Passage,” “Low Tide” and “Stop the Pounding Heart.” His most recent doc “What You Gonna Do When the World’s On Fire?” about a community of Black people in New Orleans during the summer of 2017, when a string of brutal killings of Black men sent shockwaves throughout the country, launched from the Venice competition in 2018. “The Damned,” which is Minervini’s first feature film, is set during the American Civil War in the winter of 1862.

The naturalistic war drama follows a troop of volunteer soldiers tasked with patrolling unchartered borderlands in western territories. “As their mission ultimately changes course, the meaning behind their engagement begins to elude them,” reads the film’s provided synopsis.

This film, which will premiere at Cannes in Un Certain Regard, is heavily informed by Minervini’s previous work and his experience of living in the American South for more than a decade, as he says in promotional materials. “It was a very conscious choice to go back to a moment where a lot of these roots were being planted: the great divide between North and South, Christianity, a kind of toxic masculinity,” the director adds. “I wanted to understand how these issues persist, why there is still a lot of nostalgia for the Civil War, how that time shaped a sense of distrust toward institutions,” he goes on. “I wanted the film to tie into the experience of people who were left in limbo during the war, in the middle of a transition from very conservative values to a new society: people who didn’t even know what to.