'The friend of genius', the new episodes directed by Alice Rohrwacher: I brought the series on holiday

friend, the brilliant goes on vacation. The two episodes, The kiss and The betrayal, tell the story of the holiday of Lila and Lenù in Ischia, the meeting with Nino Sarratore and the love of two friends for the "the son of the poet". Monday, February 17, broadcast on Rai 1 two new episodes of the second season, the History of the new surname (the third and the fourth), and for the fourth and the fifth chapter Saverio Costanzo has entrusted the direction of the series is the saga of Elena Ferrante to Alice Rohrwacher . After the success of The Wonders and Lazarus happy (both award winners at Cannes) is his first experience with the short story serial.

'The friend of genius', comes the second season of 'the History of the new surname,'
How was born this collaboration?
"Xavier has sensed that in this moment of history there was a space, a tear, the beginning of a change in the path of the protagonists, and I was asked to shoot the two episodes of Ischia, which symbolize this passage. I accepted with joy but also with fear: I have never worked in the service of a story, I never separate the work of the director from that of the writing. But this was a special request, made by a friend's brilliant'. How not to accept? This new season focuses on the arrival of the Sixties and the upheaval that this time brings to the life of Elena and Lila and their friends: the emancipation of Lenù, through the study, and the dramatic development of the personal story of Lila. Fascinated me to read that Xavier has done to the series by linking it to the cinema of those years: if the first season was trying a complicity with the cinematic forms of the Fifties, with this new season comes the Nouvelle Vague, the story is broken, it breaks the way of telling a story. The beginning of this change is just a Ischia".

Why Costanzo has chosen to entrust you with these two episodes?
"he Wanted the two chapters set in Ischia scored a discontinuity in the respect of a collective history, that now is public, then a discontinuity more secret. These two episodes tell of the arrival of a group of women on the island, far away from the males, away from the ward. This is the first time that Lila and Lenù leave the ward together, is an important step in this period of the distance, at intervals, by the returns, devastating, of the husbands. We wanted there to be a different breath, even for the actors and actresses, Xavier asked me to do this experiment: take the baton, and then restituirglielo transformed. It was interesting that this part of the story was made by a director".