Italian sales company True Colours has taken international distribution rights to Roberto Andò’s “La Stranezza” (“Strangeness”), toplining Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) as the Nobel-prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello.
This tragicomic period piece about how Pirandello found inspiration to write his masterpiece “Six Characters in Search of an Author” will launch from the Rome Film Festival and concurrently have its market premiere at the Eternal City’s upcoming MIA Market, which runs Oct. 11-15.
Starring alongside Servillo are popular Sicilian comedy duo Salvo Ficarra and Valentino Picone, who are known in Italy as Ficarra and Picone.
“Strangeness” is set in 1921, the year when Pirandello returned to Sicily for the 80th birthday of his mentor, famous novelist and playwright Giovanni Verga.
Upon arriving in the city of Agrigento, the playwright becomes captured by a world populated by strange personalities, ghostly visions, distant memories and melancholy apparitions, all of which inspire him to write “Six Characters,” the play that marked a milestone in 20th-century world theater.
The new work by Andò — a veteran Italian auteur who previously worked with Servillo on “The Confessions” — is produced by Bibi Film, Tramp Limited, RAI Cinema and Medusa, which will release “Strangeness” in Italian theaters on Oct. 27.
For True Colours, “Strangeness” marks the second collaboration with Andò after they scored sales to more than 20 territories on “The Confessions,” which starred Daniel Auteil alongside Servillo, and went to Karlovy Vary.
True Colours, which is headed by Gaetano Majorino, also previously sold Ficarra and Picone’s hit comedy “It’s The Law” to more than 15 countries.