cinematography
Diego Romero Suarez-Llanos
Clarissa Cappellani
editing
Irene Vecchio
music
Giulia Tagliavia
sound
Danilo Romancino

cast
Chiara Francini
Alessandro Federico
Karl Gustaf Fredrik Lundqvist
Sara Girelli
Chloe Gatti
Daniele Gatti
Efrem Sposini

producers
Chiara Francini
Karl Gustaf Fredrik Lundqvist
Fabio Morgan
Pierfrancesco Pisani
co-producer
Mario Paloschi
production
Nemesis
with Rai Cinema
co-production
Ballandi
with the support of
MiC – Direzione Generale Cinema e Audiovisivo

Italian distribution
I Wonder Pictures
distribution@iwonderpictures.it
www.iwonderpictures.com

Italian press office
Giulia Martinez
giuliamarpress@gmail.com
Arianna Monteverdi
arianna.monteverdi@gmail.com

A film about the desire for happiness, based on the play by Franca Rame and Dario Fo. For years now, the highly-regarded actress and author Chiara Francini has brought The Open Couple to the stage. This timeless fairy tale or inferno, as the case may be, looks at couples in love, and love beyond couples. That’s the story of Antonia, whose husband proposes an open marriage. She only agrees so she won’t lose him, but everything changes as soon as she starts to investigate her feelings and peer out over her living-room couch. Chiara/Antonia, now torn between her husband Fredrik and her partner-in-crime and on-stage, Alessandro, resolves to explore a world born of the open couples of the ‘70s, a world of polyamory, the young and not-so-young who are “against” monogamy, feminists, and sex-positive parties. She delves into her own soul, her life and loves filled with questions, doubt, laughter and the certainties we desperately hold on to, as a way to rein ourselves in.

2024 Coppia aperta quasi spalancata
2021 Il Palazzo (doc)
2016 Liberami (doc)
2009 Housing (doc)
2006 Il lato grottesco della vita (doc)
2003 Suicidio perfetto (short)
2001 Close up (short)
2000 Los colores de la trance, Marrakesh (doc)

“The 1983 play by Franca Rame and Dario Fo was radical in the way it addressed women’s freedom in sexual and romantic relationships, in a bourgeois society in which only men could cheat, in a couple. Forty years later, how much has changed in Italy, in terms of fidelity? Inspired by the political and satirical vision of Franca Rame’s work in theater, I instantly decided to break up the play and create an open dramatic structure that moves back and forth between what happens on stage and what happens behind the scenes. The film swings between fiction and documentary, in a temporal framework that coincides with the tour of the two actors, who still can’t see the link between the play and their own lives. They’ll only find out when they venture into certain real situations – worlds that are still underground in Italy, which no longer accept the monopoly of monogamy as the only value system and offer a radically new vision of relationships, such as polyamory. Chiara and Alessandro have built their characters loosely around elements of their own experience, and their relationships with other characters in the play draw on real people observed first-hand. As a result, the points of view proliferate, and microcosms that would have never even come close to each other now communicate across a broad canvas that portrays the shapes love takes in contemporary society, and perhaps in the future.” (Federica Di Giacomo)

Federica Di Giacomo graduated with a degree in anthropology in Florence and worked for the Teatro Danza in Italy and abroad. In Barcelona she attended a Master’s program in documentary filmmaking. A screenwriter, filmmaker and camera operator, in 2016 her film Deliver Us earned her the Horizons Award for Best Film at Venice, the Solinas Prize for a Documentary Film, Best Documentary at the Madrid Film Festival, and the Doc/it Professional Award. The film was shortlisted for the Silver Ribbons, David di Donatello, and the European Film Awards. Her earlier works include: Il lato grottesco della vita (2006), which garnered accolades at the Torino Film Festival, and Housing (2009), which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and Hot Docs, among others.