SPOTLIGHT

PRODUCER Donatella Palermo

DONATELLA PALERMO, born in Catania, lives in Rome. A producer since the early nineties with Stemal Entertainment among others, she garnered a Nastro d’argento nomination for To Die for Tano (1997) and won an award at the Rome Film Festival for Liscio (2006). Over the course of her career, she has produced feature films such as Viol@ (1998) and Notturno bus (2007) as well as non-fiction like the docudrama Caesar Must Die (2012). She produced Gianfranco Rosi’s documentary Fire at Sea (2016), about refugees landing in Lampedusa, which won several awards including the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 66th Berlin Film Festival and an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary. She also produced Rosi’s Notturno (2020), a documentary about lives marked by war in the Middle East, as well as Valentina Pedicini’s Faith (2019), a documentary about a religious sect.

The rapport between producers and film commissions isn’t always so positive. DP It’s extremely important, though. And not just because of the funding. Working with film commissions makes you feel part of a whole, and not a stranger wandering alone. I think that their role should be protected and encouraged, both financially and structurally.

What are you working on at the moment? DP If the 2020 Cannes Film Festival had taken place, Jonathan Nossiter’s Last Words would’ve been in Competition. It stars Nick Nolte, Charlotte Rampling, Alba Rohrwacher and Stellan Skarsgård: a brilliant cast with whom I could only have dreamt of working. The film tells the story of the end of humanity and of a young man, Kalipha Touray, who travels through a desertified world. When he arrives in Bologna, among the ruins of the Cineteca, he discovers cinema in the form of film clips, which represent the memory of what has been lost. Then I’m also working again with Roberta Torre, on two projects. We are both very happy about collaborating again; we both missed it. And I’m working with Paolo Taviani on his new film, Leonora Addio. Paolo still has great freshness and daring, as well as the pure heart of a director. I’m very proud to be working with him. All I can say about myself is that I’ve been lucky in life: I’ve met wonderful directors who have given my work purpose and significance. T#12

SPOTLIGHT Wilfried Gufler

WILFRIED GUFLER, 51, is currently producing his first feature film: Sisters, an adoption drama, is a co-production of his Bolzano-based company Albolina Film with Latvia’s Fenixfilm. Having founded Albolina in 2012, Gufler worked for several years as an enterprising service producer, bevor venturing into self-produced films, initally documentaries: the impressive Lake Reschen documentary The Sunken Village, Pepe Danquart’s road movie Ahead of Me The South were festival successes. Soon, Albolina, now a five-person team, will premiere My Upside Down World, the portrait of a female climbing champion. “As a locally-based producer, I always jump at the opportunity to take up local issues in a sensitive and timely way,” says Gufler. Such as in his next documentary project Breaking the Silence about sexual abuse. Gufler, who has a background in business, is more than happy to relieve creative minds of the tiresome number-crunching, he says. “I have become something of a generalist in the industry by working with filmmakers,” says the producer. “All the more reason to appreciate working with specialists.” That’s part of his recipe for success: “A feel for good stories, thinking internationally and, above all, surrounding myself with people who are great at what they do,” he says. “The film industry isn’t for

lone wolves.” www.albolina.org