'La Cresima' a short film by Alessandro & Manuela

Aim

Help us complete the budget for our next short film 'La Cresima,' co-written and co-directed by Alessandro Luchetti and Manuela Lazić!

La Cresima, our 1st short film as co-writers and co-directors

After co-producing a few shorts and, last year, making our own first short film Conversation (written, directed and starring Manuela Lazić and soon to be submitted to film festivals) through our production company Ça Existe Productions, we are now about to shoot our ambitious 2nd short!

Co-written and soon-to-be co-directed by us, Alessandro Luchetti and Manuela Lazić, La Cresima ('the confirmation') will be a 17min short film shot in Tuscany, Italy between 1 and 5 June 2022. Thanks to executive producer Curtis Duggan, about 75% of the budget is already covered for this project, featuring an ensemble cast of talented Italian rising stars and newcomers. The crew also brings together experienced professionals from both Italy and the UK, including Director of Photography Robbie Bryant, who also shot Conversation.

                                             
                                                  Poster for Conversation

More than our second short, however, La Cresima marks the beginning of our close creative collaboration: for the first time, we have written a script together and will be directing together. We are bringing our experiences (Manuela as writer-director-actor, Alessandro as producer) together, but also creating something brand new, that we've never done before: a true filmmaking duo. It's the beginning of our dream coming true – to make films as a team and bring our own individual and shared visions into the world. As our most challenging piece yet, La Cresima will be our stepping stone towards the feature filmmaking we've always envisioned. 

Why should you help?

Your contribution, however small, would help bring La Cresima to completion at the high standard we believe it deserves, and take this dream ever further. Working in another country has its costs (such as travel and accommodation) and so does mobilising a large ensemble of actors to tell a very personal story, something we've never done on this scale but are very excited to tackle! As always, knowing that we are only as good as the people we work with, we will prioritise paying our cast and crew at good rates and ensuring their experience with us is enjoyable.

Once the shoot over, we will begin post-production as soon as possible, aiming to submit the film to festivals in 2023 – which has a price, too. You could help La Cresima not only get the best editing, sound mixing and colour grading possible, but also reach a wider audience. 

What is it all about?

La Cresima follows a young man as he visits his Italian hometown, where his old demons return with a vengeance and are now also after his younger brother.

It reveals how small towns, when they leave no space for difference and impose a status quo, perpetuate a cycle of boredom and empty rebellion that sucks in young people and threatens their futures.

It's a bold yet tender look at the way our roots keep us tied to the past and will drag us back to who we were.

Why is it important to us?

ALESSANDRO
I'm interested in exploring the relationship between a place and its people, or the absence of it, and I want to make personal films.

La Cresima is a dive into my adolescence in my hometown and how it shaped me. Everything around my friends and I felt monotonous and hypocritical, from church to our school teachers and our parents, and all we wanted to do was hang out with each other. Drugs and alcohol can be fun, and when they came into the picture, drinking and getting high ended up being all we did, since we were in a place that didn't offer anything else but a lack of a sense of possibility. Soon enough, this obviously turned into problems and very stupid decisions.

I have always felt that there was something more out there and it was only once I left for London that I found it, through cinema and art, and my perspective changed. There is some of me in both brothers and this film is my opportunity to tell the full story of this place - how fun it was then, but also how frustrating it often feels today.

MANUELA
What resonates with me the most in La Cresima is the loneliness and search for comfort at the heart of it. I too grew up in a small town where I felt isolated and bored. Although I withdrew within myself rather than turn to partying and drugs, I relate deeply to the frustration that these characters (and Alessandro) feel. I also understand the desire to be close to and protect one's family, especially when everything else around us is difficult. I'm interested in the ways people relate to each other and how they navigate the thin line between independence and communion with others, having a free spirit, and being influenced by their environment. La Cresima brings these questions to light with force and grace.

We chose La Cresima to be our first short film as a filmmaking duo because both of us can relate to its theme of home and how, over the years, one can grow estranged from one’s origins. We both left our respective countries in search of some other way of life when we were young, and our returns home tend to be both soothing and disorientating.

                               
                            Manuela and Alessandro on the set of Conversation

Much like being in a relationship, making films is a mixture of strong feelings, so what could be better than making them with the person you love? After making Conversation together last year, we are taking our professional and personal relationship further by co-writing and co-directing this more ambitious short. 

Cinematic references

La Haine by Mathieu Kassovitz
Friendship through hardship

                                                                                                I Vitelloni by Federico Fellini
             The quiet sense discomfort that can fester in a small town where all is familiar
                                                                      

Les 400 Coups by François Truffaut
Childhood innocence, its purity and its risks

                                                                Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Terry Gilliam
                                                                                                           The appeal of escape
                                                                      

For you, dear donor

You are part of our team as soon as you join the campaign! Your reward will depend on your contribution (see sidebar), but everyone will be able to follow the film's progress, including peeks behind-the-scenes of the shoot in early June, on this page as well as on social media. 

Meet the team

WRITERS & DIRECTORS
Manuela Lazić & Alessandro Luchetti

Manuela and Alessandro created their own film production company Ça Existe Productions in 2020, with the goal of making their own, personal films as a filmmaking duo. 

With his producing experience gained by working on several short films — either independent or backed by the British Film Institute — Alessandro brings his understanding of the craft of filmmaking. A poet since his childhood, he found in cinema a different way of expressing himself. Manuela first approached the film industry as a film journalist and critic, writing for British and American publications for over 5 years. She is also an actress trained in the Meisner technique.

Together, they began by making Manuela’s first short film as writer-director a reality — Conversation just completed postproduction. La Cresima is the first film they wrote together and will direct as a duo — the first in what will be a long series of projects. They are currently in early development on two feature projects.

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Robbie Bryant

After working internationally as a camera assistant on major studio films for 7 years, Robbie was mentored by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos on Jack Ryan, Locke and a camera operator on Cinderella. Robbie was next mentored by Dan Mindel on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, before becoming a DOP in his own right and is universally considered as one of the rising stars in cinematography in the UK today.

Robbie won the Best Cinematographer award for Thousand Yesterdays at the 4th European Cinematography Awards 7/19 and his recent short Wale was shortlisted for an Academy Award 2019 and nominated for a BAFTA 2019.

PRODUCER
Curtis Duggan

Curtis is a producer, entrepreneur and musician. Over the last decade, Curtis has built several companies in the technology sector, including a remote health technology company that was sold to a Virgin company in 2020. As well as writing, producing and distributing independent music since 2020, Curtis joined Ça Existe Productions as executive producer on several of their short films.

PRODUCER
Tea Paci

After completing her undergraduate studies in Drama and Visual Arts in Bologna, Tea moved to London in September 2020 to pursue a master’s in Film and Screen Studies at Goldsmiths. 

Before moving to London, she worked in contemporary art, then approaching cinema as a production assistant. Film festivals are to her creative and social incubators that allow for the fullest experience of cinema. Creating spaces for people to encounter and experience moving images is something she is passionate about. Currently, she is doing precisely that in Shkodra, her hometown in Albania, with a small film festival called “Ekrani I Artit”, whose vision lies at the intersection of visual arts and cinema. 

This project closed unsuccessfully on 12th June 2022