Where it was filmed 'The tearsmith'

The Tearsmith by Alessandro Genovesi is inspired by the book of the same name by the Emilian writer known by the pseudonym Erin Doom. Although set in a small town in Minnesota, United States, the film was shot between the spring and summer of 2023 in Italy, specifically in and around Rome. The Grave, the orphanage at the heart of the story, where Nica and Rigel (Caterina Ferioli, Simone Baldasseroni) grew up, was created in the Buon Pastore complex in via di Bravetta, an early 20^th century building in the Valle dei Casali nature reserve. A legend has told and retold in this place: about the tearsmith a mysterious craftsman, guilty of having forged all the fears and anxieties that inhabit the hearts of men.

At seventeen, a new life is about to start for Nica: the Milligans have begun the adoption process and she will finally have the family she has always wanted. She won’t be alone in the new house (a villa in via del Pianello, Bracciano) though, as restless and mysterious Rigel is leaving the orphanage with her: the last person in the world that Nica wants as her adoptive brother. Rigel is intelligent, shrewd, plays the piano like a demon enchanter and is endowed with enchanting beauty, but his angelic appearance hides a dark nature.

The teenagers start at Barnaby High School, whose entrance is the Lasalle Museum, Casa Generalizia dei Fratelli delle Scuole Cristiane, in via Aurelia 476, Rome, where immediately makes friends with Billie (Nicky Passarella) and Miki (Sveva Romana Candelletta). The latter lives in an English-style residence actually Villa York, on via Cassia, in the Campagnano Romano countryside north of Rome. The neoclassical building that provides the exterior of the court is the British Academy, in via Antonio Gramsci 61, near Villa Borghese in Rome.

The iron bridge that leads to the school is actually in Pescara, connecting piazza Garibaldi with via Orazio. Campo Imperatore, in the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park, is the backdrop to the opening scene.

Although Nica and Rigel have a common past of pain and deprivation, coexistence seems impossible, but kindness and anger are two different ways to fight pain to stay alive and hide the emotions that devastate them both, each becoming for the other the tearsmith of legend. You cannot lie to the tearsmith: they will have to find the courage to accept that the desperate force which attracts them to each other is love.