I met Virgilio Villoresi in Milan. We spent two hours talking about stop motion, 16mm film, optical effects. About making handmade cinema in a world racing towards AI.

He's the latest filmmaker I interviewed for Cinema Club, my column for Perimetro exploring independent, auteur cinema. It's my way of building a network of people to exchange ideas with and grow as an author.

Over the past year and a half, I've spoken with Carlo Sironi, Tommaso Santambrogio, Giacomo Abbruzzese, Beniamino Barrese. Filmmakers I admire for what they do and for making deeply personal, original, courageous work.

Villoresi is considered one of the leading contemporary animation artists, specialized in stop motion and handmade animation techniques. In 2021, he founded his production company – Fantasmagoria – to self-produce "Orfeo", his first feature film inspired by Dino Buzzati's "Poem Strip".

The film was shot over two and a half years using 16mm film, stop motion, and optical effects from early cinema, and premiered in the Out of Competition section at the 82nd Venice Film Festival.

While AI is revolutionizing the world, Villoresi goes in the opposite direction: film stock, stop motion, everything made by hand. That's exactly what struck me: when everything can be replicated by a machine, having a unique voice becomes essential.

Virgilio started out making commercials and music videos before breaking into cinema – a path that's extremely difficult in Italy, where there's a strong centralization of film production and a divide between commercial work and auteur filmmaking. I see filmmakers in other countries move between these worlds much more fluidly.

I keep seeking out these conversations because they help me understand what kind of author I want to be and what stories I want to tell.

I'm currently developing projects like Forever Hic, Blood of my Blood, and Anno Zero, and building a network of people to share this path with makes all the difference.