Garrone, Matteo

Matteo Garrone (October 15, 1968, Rom, Italien)

After obtaining a diploma from art school, Garrone dedicated himself to painting.

He made the decision to become a filmmaker in 1996, a choice that was almost instantly rewarded: his short film entitled "Silhouette" scooped Nanni Moretti’s Golden Sacher award.

This achievement paved the way for his debut feature length film: he pieced together three segments originally intended to be short films – the first being the above-mentioned "Silhouette" – to release "Terra di mezzo" (1997), which depicts Rome and the immigrants who struggle to survive there, amid destitution and exploitation, illegal labour and nostalgia for their native lands.

Garrone was to pick up the theme of emargination again in the subsequent "Guests (Ospiti)" (1998), a docudrama that portrays two young Albanians who scrape a living by washing dishes in the capital.

“I’d obviously like to find my own way and not be considered an imitator. Some have claimed my style is a new neorealism. But neorealism is of course a style that is connected to an earlier period of Italian cinema. I do owe a great debt to those directors — to Rossellini and many others.”

A different society is placed under the microscope in "Roman summer (Estate romana)" (2000), which is set in Rome in the run-up to the Jubilee and portrays a number of frustrated characters – a would-be artist, a young single mother, a former actress between jobs - who are all among life’s losers: there remains a constant sense of malaise, a kind of existential disquiet that is almost impossible to pin down.With "The embalmer (L’imbalsamatore)" (2002), presented at Cannes to positive critical reviews,

Garrone gave audiences his best, most complete film to date: the ambiguous relationship between a dwarfish taxidermist and his handsome assistant, which becomes a triangle when a strong-willed, reckless young woman comes on the scene, becomes the means for dissecting different forms of unhappiness, against backdrops that vary from a frozen Caserta to a foggy, devitalized Cremona.

The subsequent "First love (Primo Amore)" (2004), the synopsis of the relationship between a man determined to starve his girlfriend until she is dangerously thin, is as sharp and clinical as any medical record: the utter indifference with which the story is narrated to the viewer becomes the stylistic hallmark of one of Italy’s most original and bitter films of recent seasons.

2023   Io capitano (2023)
2008   Gomorrah (2008)