During the filmmaking process, the producer Jacques Grandclaude surrounded the venerable filmmaker with a team of young professionals from the production company Communauté, which had its origins in the French protest movements of May ‘68. 11 hours of shooting, 45 hours of recording and 2,500 photos evidence Rossellini’s last cinematic journey. Shot between January and May 1977, these last images, these last words, reveal an unknown Rossellini. They actually reveal his creative process through great details. It’s like witnessing ‘live’ the film’s genesis. Il Cinema Ritrovato will feature a clip of this precious footage expressly edited by Jacques Grandclaude.

An exceptional document, filmed by Roberto Rossellini’s last producer and comrade in arms during the rehearsals and shooting of what would turn out to be his final work. Jacques Grandclaude patiently and meticulously filmed every stage, from conception to pre-production and location scouting, without creating hierarchies or prioritising one element over the other, dedicating the same attention to Rossellini choosing lenses as to the grips laying tracks for a dolly shot. The film is a precious document which shows with great precision how a film crew works, how a shot is designed and then carried out, and how relations between different parts of the troupe are structured – which is an absolute novelty in the history of such documentaries. Also in evidence is a focused and scrupulous Rossellini, who by this point in his career possessed exceptional technique and was respected and admired by the crew – a figure far removed from the image of the ageing and lazy director which tended to circulate at the time. This revelation of the creative process of a great director remains a unique episode in the history of cinema. And of the history of art in general.

Alain Bergala