La terra degli sconfitti
In Cinema
Baburka Production, in co-production with AboveThe Line, is proud to present ‘La Terra degli Sconfitti’,a short movie by Maurizio Ravallese with Andrea Tidona and Ennio Coltorti. The movie is set in 1956 Portugal, deep in the fascist dictatorship: as the regime is shaken by several murders by the hand of a revolutionary group called “The Salazarists’ Cutthroats”, the general Manuel Coimbra Nalapres (Andrea Tidona) travels to Carlos Martinez’s farm (Ennio Coltorti) to investigate on the mysterious disappearance of the man’s wife.
The Director
Maurizio Ravallese, born in Rome on March 31st,1989, has a Doctorate in Philology and History of the Ancient World. He is a tenured Latin and Greek teacher. He has worked as a director’s assistant on different television and film productions. He has also directed various video music clips. In addition, he is the director and screenwriter of three short films: Miracle on the Outskirts (2013), The Land of the defeated (2014), and The Suit (2020).
Shot in the October of 2014, the movie is the result of the collaboration of our team with professionals of the highest levels, like the set designer Massimo Galluzzi and costume designer Bettina Bimbi who, with their mastery, brought to the project an exceptional historic realism. A level of professionalism that the casts shared as well: apart from Andrea Tidona (“La vita è Bella”, “La meglio Gioventù”, for which he has won the Nastro d’Argento in 2004) and Ennio Coltorti (actor and theater director and the extraordinary voice of Harvey Keitel, Marlon Brando, Hugo Weaving, Ben Kingsley and many other he has dobbed for the Italian cinema), there are also Roberta Mattei (who starred in the Oscar nominated “Non Essere Cattivo”), Roberto di Maio (director, theater actor and protagonist of the movie “Nel nome di Nessuno”), Claudio Cotugno (theater and series actor that starred in the series “Squadra Antimafia 8”) and Lorenzo Censi. Also starring Maria Teresa Celli, Lorenzo Accolla, Pasquale Greco, Messina Alessandro, Piero Grant, Giorgia Cecchetti and Luca Pienotti. For Baburka the movie has been a real challenge, since the project is one of the first that the team has tackled in the first year of the company’s existence, and has been a great trial for our professionals and collaborators.
The movie is set in 1956 Portugal, deep in the fascist dictatorship: as the regime is shaken by several murders by the hand of a revolutionary group called “The Salazarists’ Cutthroats”, the general Manuel Coimbra Nalapres (Andrea Tidona) travels to Carlos Martinez’s farm (Ennio Coltorti) to investigate on the mysterious disappearance of the man’s wife.
‘La Terra degli Sconfitti’ has been officially presented March 23rd at the ANICA theater in Rom and is still following its festival distribution, having been selected in several national and international festivals and winning the prize for best photography at the Dino De Laurentis International Prize for Shorts.
Director Maurizio Ravallese says: “The film’s goal is to represent an innovation in the landscape of Italian Shorts. Most times us Italians choose the easier road: we settle for heartbreaking and tear-jerking stories, we pander the public and the critics choosing a social problem or even a disease and we develop them to make them moving. It’s a strategy that manages to emotively engage the public masking the lack of originality.
With ‘La Terra degli Sconfitti’ I’ve tried to bring on the screen the tragedy of a friendship divided by a revolution and by political choices: two men that meet after long years and engage in a dialectic duel without sparing any tactic. In the short, my characters move in a lonely dried out and deserted landscape, shattered by their regrets and pasts, and by the excesses of the battle between communists and the Salazar’s loyal forces. A sort of Western then, a work capable of mixing political commentary with the regret for long lost friendship and past”.
A level of professionalism that the casts shared as well: apart from Andrea Tidona (“La vita è Bella”, “La meglio Gioventù”, for which he has won the Nastro d’Argento in 2004) and Ennio Coltorti (actor and theater director and the extraordinary voice of Harvey Keitel, Marlon Brando, Hugo Weaving, Ben Kingsley and many other he has dobbed for the Italian cinema), there are also Roberta Mattei (who starred in the Oscar nominated “Non Essere Cattivo”), Roberto di Maio (director, theater actor and protagonist of the movie “Nel nome di Nessuno”), Claudio Cotugno (theater and series actor that starred in the series “Squadra Antimafia 8”) and Lorenzo Censi. Also starring Maria Teresa Celli, Lorenzo Accolla, Pasquale Greco, Messina Alessandro, Piero Grant, Giorgia Cecchetti and Luca Pienotti.
