In the year marking the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante (Ravenna, 13/14 September 1321), shooting on a film about the great poet, a project strongly championed by Pupi Avati, has begun in Foligno. The first location was exceptional: historic Palazzo Trinci in piazza della Repubblica granted use of various rooms including the Gothic staircase, the Loggia, the sala delle Arti, the sala dei Giganti, the Trinci-Diocesan Museum corridor and the Nelli chapel.
The film is an 18-year dream now coming true for its creator: the life of the writer of the Divine Comedy is told by Giovanni Boccaccio – played by Sergio Castellitto – who wrote the poet’s earliest biography Trattatello in Laude di Dante.
The production schedule includes 11 weeks of shooting in Umbria, Marche, Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna and Rome. Dante will be played by Alessandro Sperduti and Giulio Pizzirani (as the older poet) while other faces chosen by Avati include Alessandro Haber (Abbot of Vallombrosa), Enrico Lo Verso (Donato degli Albanzani), Carlotta Gamba (Beatrice), Leopoldo Mastelloni (Pope Boniface VIII) and many others.
The film is produced by Duea Film with Rai Cinema and will be released theatrically with 01 Distribution. The synopsis: Dante dies in exile in Ravenna in 1321. In September 1350, Giovanni Boccaccio is charged with taking a symbolic payment of 10 gold florins to Dante’s daughter, Sister Beatrice, at the Santo Stefano degli Ulivi convent in Ravenna. The journey from Florence to Ravenna is the very same route taken by Dante decades before: the same stops, the same borgos, castles and libraries. Boccaccio tells the human story, meeting the people who gave the poet shelter in the years of exile and those who rejected him.