Mario Martone

Member of jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000

[press conference for Nostalgia (2022) at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival] When I read this novel, Nostalgia, I felt something mysterious in it - a feeling of mystery which has stayed with me throughout the preparation of the script and while shooting the film. This is something we all sensed - this mystery was constantly present and it always guided us in our work. It's a magic novel, just like the district in the film. It's not a film about Naples, this is a film about a special district in Naples - la Sanità - which is a real enclave within Naples. You can visit the district in a superficial way, or on the surface, but it's also a sort of underground city, a whole maze which you can see, and it symbolises the maze or the labyrinth of the characters. You have the maze in the district - and it's hard to find your way out of the maze - and then you have the characters. Felice, for example, goes around the district and you have the internal maze within that person. Everyone has a past, a past which is not a straight line; our individual past is made of choices, mistakes, decisions which are erroneous, missed-out opportunities, we're all a labyrinth or a maze, and you can enter the maze and stay within it or try and find your way out and move forward. In life, you always look back on your past and on this maze and that's exactly what the character Felice does in the film.