The Time It Takes is the autobiographical story of the relationship between Francesca Comencini (played as an adult by Romana Maggiora Vergano) and her father Luigi (Fabrizio Gifuni) and how their passion for cinema brought them together and yet also divided them.
“After many years spent in the same job as him, trying to be different from him, I wanted to show how much I owe everything I am to him: I wanted to pay homage to my father, to his way of making films, to his way of being, to the importance that his work and his commitment had for our cinema, and the importance he had for me. Maybe, I said to myself, maybe I am now old enough to be capable of doing it, maybe I am now up to the task of telling this story. Maybe, now, the time has come to thank him”.
It is the story of how, as a child, little Francesca frequented her father's sets, those of the unforgettable Pinocchio, pulsating with life, noise, humanity, work, worry, infatuation, magic and sweat... and how she lost herself in those worlds. As she grows up, the enchantment fades and a rift rises between them. She thinks she will never be up to his level and fails on purpose so she really can’t.
The backdrop to this intimate story is the history of Italy: these are the years of massacres, social revolution and the drugs that turned the lives of an entire generation upside down.
Filming took place mainly in Rome from end August 2023.
The Time It Takes is the autobiographical story of the relationship between Francesca Comencini (played as an adult by Romana Maggiora Vergano) and her father Luigi (Fabrizio Gifuni) and how their passion for cinema brought them together and yet also divided them.
“After many years spent in the same job as him, trying to be different from him, I wanted to show how much I owe everything I am to him: I wanted to pay homage to my father, to his way of making films, to his way of being, to the importance that his work and his commitment had for our cinema, and the importance he had for me. Maybe, I said to myself, maybe I am now old enough to be capable of doing it, maybe I am now up to the task of telling this story. Maybe, now, the time has come to thank him”.
It is the story of how, as a child, little Francesca frequented her father's sets, those of the unforgettable Pinocchio, pulsating with life, noise, humanity, work, worry, infatuation, magic and sweat... and how she lost herself in those worlds. As she grows up, the enchantment fades and a rift rises between them. She thinks she will never be up to his level and fails on purpose so she really can’t.
The backdrop to this intimate story is the history of Italy: these are the years of massacres, social revolution and the drugs that turned the lives of an entire generation upside down.
Filming took place mainly in Rome from end August 2023.
A father and his daughter live in the rooms of childhood: her childhood and the magical childhood of the tale of Pinocchio, the film he is working on. The father tells her about his work and listens to her, observing and speaking to her with a serious, composed, and respectful tone that one uses, not with an adult, with a complete person: yes, a person who is a child. She visits the set where he works, pulsating with life, noise, humanity, work, worry, infatuation, magic and sweat. And she gets lost in this world. The daughter becomes a girl, the enchantment of that limbo between them vanishes; she feels it and understands that the break with childhood is irreparable. She understands it from the way her father looks at her. She thinks she will never reach his level and fails on purpose so that she can’t. She takes drugs and comes home pretending that nothing is going on. Initially disarmed, her father takes a stand and decides that he will not play along. He unmasks his daughter, looks out over that abyss, and, with few words but a lot of presence, takes her with him to Paris.