Making films
is an act of faith

Hello Reader,
​
last January 2025 I was in Trieste for When East Meets West, one of the most important co-production forums in Europe. There I met Andrea Magnani of Pilgrim Film, and from that informal conversation a collaboration was born.

I had a story in mind for a short film and turned it into a screenplay: a father and a daughter, the same summer road trip every year to Friuli. A distraction at the gas station, petrol instead of diesel, and they find themselves stranded on the motorway. But something has changed between them.

In the meantime the project changed its title (who knows, maybe it will change again) and together we applied for the an Italian regional grant.

"Sempre più vicini" is among the winners: we will receive funding for the development of the project ✌️

Making films is an act of faith. Not in the religious sense of the word, but in the more interior one: you believe in something that doesn't exist yet, you build arguments to convince those who might fund it, you write and rewrite without knowing if it will ever get anywhere.

Independent cinema is going through a difficult moment. Cuts to public funding, production uncertainty, artificial intelligence reshaping the boundaries of creativity and communication, an economic crisis squeezing budgets.

And yet something is moving, and it often moves far from the traditional centers of power. Regional film commissions and local funds are doing extraordinary and quiet work: they support projects that the traditional market would never finance, they build production ecosystems in cities you wouldn't expect. The cinema that emerges from these places is often more courageous, more personal, more willing to take risks.

A grant won is not a film made. But it's a step forward in a process. The short film I want to make with my daughter is now in development, and the work continues with location scouting and pre-production.

It's not the only project I'm working on. For Anno Zero, my dystopian film set in a bunker in the woods on the border between Italy and Slovenia, we submitted an application with Lume Production for another development grant. If we win it, I'll restart the writing process with a new screenwriter, and from there the road toward production grants would open up. Sure, a path that remains long and uncertain. But a little faith is necessary.

Two projects, two parallel paths, and the conviction that it's worth continuing.

Marco