A mordant Toni Servillo may have met his match in this exclusive early image from Scherzetto, director Mario Martone’s feature adaptation of an Italian novel of the same name by author Domenico Starnone. 

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In an inspired bit of casting, Italian screen legend Servillo stars in Scherzetto as Daniele, a renowned illustrator whose life of elegant solitude is abruptly turned upside down when he’s called on to look after his wildly imaginative and unruly five-year-old grandson. Daniele reluctantly returns to his childhood home in Naples, where his daughter has asked him to care for Mario while she and her husband are away. Confined together in the apartment, grandfather and grandson enter into an escalating battle of wills that forces Daniele to reckon with the ghosts of his own childhood and family history.

Scherzetto will premiere out of competition at the Venice Film Festival on Sept 10. The project’s sales agent, Rai Cinema, shared a first-look still (above) with The Hollywood Reporter shortly before the festival’s opening. 

A Lido regular and pillar of contemporary Italian cinema and theater generally, Martone made his feature debut with Death of a Neapolitan Mathematician, which won Venice’s grand jury prize in 1992. His last feature at the festival was the 2021 competition entry Qui rido io, another collaboration with Servillo. For his part, Servillo, a lion of the Italian stage and screen, arrives back in Venice just one year after winning the festival’s Volpi Cup for best actor for his performance in Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia. 

“Two characters at opposite ends of life, a family situation that is often comic, a single setting, and ghosts,” Martone says of Scherzetto‘s premise. “As I worked on the film, my own ghosts also began to emerge, difficult to keep at bay, and I started chasing them with the camera.”

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“For Toni Servillo, too, I don’t think this was simply a matter of playing a role,” Martone adds. “It was an immersion into unknown territory, dominated by the presence of a five-year-old who, every day, could have told us: ‘Enough, I’m bored!’” 

Five-year-old Lorenzo Perrotta co-stars as Mario, with Serena Rossi as Daniele’s daughter Betta, Leonardo Lidi as her husband Saverio and Gianluca Di Gennaro and Giovanni Ludeno also in the cast. Martone co-wrote the screenplay with longtime collaborator Ippolita di Majo. Mad Entertainment produced with Rai Cinema, in association with EDI Effetti Digitali Italiani and Picomedia.

Scherzetto premieres out of competition in Venice on Sept. 10. Rai Cinema International Distribution is handling world sales, with 01 Distribution releasing the film in Italy.

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