Featuring in this year’s eight iteration of the Berlinale Co-Production Market’s Co-Pro Series, Italian drama “Belcanto” will hope to follow a trail blazed by former participating European standouts such as “Babylon Berlin,” “Freud,” “Furia,” and last year’s Series Mania winner “Blackport.”
Co-created by the trio of Mariano Di Nardo, Antonio Manca and Federico Fava and produced by leading Italian distribution-production house Lucky Red, the series project is set in 1798, as 14-year-old Carolina, her 17-year-old sister Antonia and their mother Maria seek refuge in the city of Milan after stabbing their violent father to death.
The elder sister dreams of becoming a renowned singer, much as her mother once hoped for when she was the girl’s age. However, an unhappy and often violent marriage waylaid young Maria, who is now willing to go the extreme lengths to ensure that her daughter is afforded every opportunity withheld from herself.
Maria’s intense focus on the elder sister leaves little attention or affection for young Carolina however, who more modestly only dreams of earning her mother’s affection. Things go upside down however when a well-respected singing teacher in the cosmopolitan city renowned for its music discovers that Maria’s youngest is the true talent in the family.
“There is always a moment, in every great opera, when we as audience feel as if our feelings are being ripped from our chest, leaving us breathless for the violence of the emotions suffered,” the series’ creative team explained to Variety ahead of presenting their series at the Co-Pro sessions.
“With ‘Belcanto,’ we want to conjure that same spell. Through Maria’s stubbornness and hardness, or Carolina’s overwhelming hunger for love, or Antonia’s pain for her own inadequacy, each character has a desire that’s impossible to silence and impossible to fulfil, and the structure of the tale follows the sudden jerks, recoils and explosions of these impulses. Around them, a world that is changing forever. Cruel and full of hope, where everything is possible and nothing is certain, ever,” they summarized.
While in Berlin, the film’s team is looking to meet with sales agents and prospective co-producers and hopes to attach a major European broadcaster or global platform to the project. With an eight-episode first season treatment in hand, writing is set to begin, and the series’ creators and producers hope to name a director soon with help from the show’s future production partners.
“Belcanto” and the other nine participating projects streamed their pitches on the Co-Pro platform on Tuesday afternoon.