The Closing Film of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, presented Out of Competition following the awards ceremony, Dio ride (God Laughs) takes Giovanni Veronesi into the heart of the seventeenth century.
Loosely inspired by true events and starring Pierfrancesco Favino and Silvio Orlando, among others, the film depicts the clash between the disarming freedom of Brother Leopoldo and an authority that dreads the power of an accessible, ironic, and popular language.
In seventeenth-century Italy, Friar Leopoldo da Casamacchia preaches the Gospel in plain language, speaking of a God who is close to humankind and knows how to laugh. His message of joy and hope draws ever larger crowds and empties the churches, alarming Rome. Pope Innocent X ...
What was the initial core of the film: the figure of Brother Leopoldo or the confrontation with Cardinal Maculani?
The starting point was to approach comedy through a dramatic lens, because to me comedy is serious business. Then came Brother Leopoldo, with his purity and his honesty. And finally power entered the frame – real, sweeping power, the kind that forces people to believe whatever it dictates. Those were the three foundational phases.
Leopoldo’s revolution seems first and foremost a linguistic one. While the Church speaks Latin, he recounts the Gospel through accessible words, joy, and irony. Is this also a reflection on language as a political act?
Over the centuries, the core issue has never changed, which is also why we set the film in the seventeenth century, an era of profound shifts. Political language lies; it is dishonest and invariably designed to crush ordinary people. And the public, unfortunately, despite having the means to rebel today, fails to do so – continuing to believe what they are told and submitting to authority in staggering fashion. I believe, therefore, that the only language one should use to reach people is quite simply an honest one.
What begins as a trial gradually evolves into a duel between Leopoldo and Maculani. How did you work with Pierfrancesco Favino and Silvio Orlando to preserve their human depth beyond the purely symbolic level? How much was already on the page, and what did they bring to the roles?
The screenplay was very rigorous – everything was written – yet working with actors remains an inherently creative process. Two extraordinary performers like Silvio Orlando and Pierfrancesco Favino inevitably bring something exceptional to the film and to the characters. Directing them was both straightforward and demanding. Straightforward because their talent carries so much on its own; demanding because their approaches to a role are entirely distinct. With Pierfrancesco, I had to be more explicit and hands-on, whereas with Silvio I needed a lighter touch, as he enters his characters on tiptoe.
Comedy runs through much of your filmography, but here laughter enters directly into the friction between freedom and power. What drew you to this duality?
What interested me most was exposing the language of power that ends up crushing the most vulnerable. I believe we are living through a historical moment in which the public struggles to understand what is happening. There is an absence of ideological direction, a lack of political awareness, and, generally speaking, widespread ignorance. It is precisely on this ignorance that highly dangerous political factions thrive, shifting the axis away from common sense and genuine politics toward an aggressive agenda – as is happening in Germany and here in Italy as well. It is an era in which people do not grasp what is unfolding and, consequently, make the wrong choices.
