CANNES – Giacomo Abbruzzese (Disco Boy) is one of the directors selected for the Marché du Film Investors Circle programme, now in its third year: the showcase aims to highlight and support artistically ambitious film projects, spanning a wide variety of styles and production budgets, and is presented in front of high-level film investors on a dedicated day. It is a powerful catalyst for private investment in auteur cinema. Many projects from past editions have obtained significant financial support, such as Chie Hayakawa’s Renoir, presented last year, in Competition at Cannes this year.
"This year's projects reflect bold and original storytelling from some of today's most exciting auteur filmmakers," said Aleksandra Zakharchenko, Head of the Investors Circle. "These are films with real cultural relevance and global potential, which require careful and long-term support. The Investors Circle intends to support these singular voices and help them move from vision to screen".
Abbruzzese's upcoming film, Disorder, co-produced by Italy's Dugong Films, is set in the tumultuous Milan of the 1990s, when the regime in Albania was collapsing, and private television networks were multiplying in Italy, providing a stage for a new ruling class. The project has already obtained funding from the MiC Selective Development Fund, the Italy-France Co-development Fund, the Piemonte Film Development Fund, and the Apulia Film Development Fund.
It is a strongly textured film, at times with very pronounced accents, a deconstruction and recontextualization of the pop imagery of the 80s and 90s, as defined by the director whose debut film, Disco Boy, presented in 2023 at the Berlinale won the Silver Bear for Best Artistic Contribution and has been sold in over 40 countries.
“More than a decade ago, when the private affairs of an Italian prime minister were filling the columns of tabloids around the world, I quickly bored of the scandalous aspect. Except for one detail, that stayed with me: dozens of escorts had entered his home without a single security check. All they had to do was be accompanied by someone they knew. I wondered what would have happened if one of these girls had been a black widow, a terrorist. In 1991, in the scorching August heat, twenty thousand people fled Albania on a single ship, dreaming of the Italy they had seen on television. I started with these two historical events, and imagined how they could have interacted,” said the director.