Director/Creator: Maria Grazia Perria, Producer: Salvatore Cubeddu, Production: Terra de Punt, Language: Sardo, Italy, 45′, 2021, Rights: World
A biography documentary which is a homage to the Sardinian Nobel Prize laureate Grazia Deledda (1871-1936) on the 150th anniversary of her birth, the Italian writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926 “for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general”.
Looking for Grazia, is the result of a journey in search of the young woman’s interpreter Deledda in a film about the writer’s early years. Eleven young Sardinian actresses, selected after a series of auditions online participate in a workshop casting in search for the protagonist of an upcoming film about the youthful years of Grazia Deledda. Thus the portrait of a girl of the late nineteenth century, born in a small village in the interior of Sardinia permeated with the conservative farmers, struggling to break through and give body to the magma of passions that agitate her. It also emerges, through the story of the eleven girls, the profile of a young Sardinian woman of today who is chasing her own dreams and cultivates your aspirations.
Almost all of them left Sardinia very young, and some of them live abroad. They did it to study, to make their dreams come true,
with determination and tenacity, he decided to overcome physical boundaries and mental. Both those who remained “out” and those who returned to Sardinia declared to have a complicated and contradictory relationship with their own land.
During the workshop / casting the young actresses show elements similar to that of the writer: ambition, creative drive, desire for an intense life. Their personal and common universe was at the same time poured into the film, comparing their stories with that of the young Grazia Deledda.
About the creator
Maria Grazia Perria has been involved in cinema and television since 1980. She has written film scripts for: The precision of the case by Cesare Cicardini; Weights Light by Enrico Pau; Notturno Bus by Davide Marengo; The small A of S. D’Alia and G. Ricci; My Tomorrow by Marina Spada; Miriam Monica’s diary Castiglioni and Surbiles with Giovanni Columbu In 2017 he wrote and directed (with D. Maggioni and L. Perini) Nel mondo grande e terrible, Shanghai Festival and in 2019 he writes and directs (with D. Maggioni)
It’s raining Desert.
Cast
Eleonora D’Aietti, Federica Demontis, Emanuela Enna, Emilia Meleddu, Valentina Picciau, Elisa Pistis, Barbara Pitzianti, Tania Saba, Marisa Serra, Elisabetta Solinas, Francesca Spano.