EXCLUSIVE: With less than a week to go until the 80th Venice Film Festival kick-off, Deadline can reveal the international trailer for Italian director Edoardo De Angelis’s opening picture Comandante.
Top Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino, who was on the awards circuit last year with Nostalgia, plays real-life WW2 submarine commander Salvatore Todaro.
The Italian naval officer and submariner earned himself a place in history for his decision to save 26 Belgian merchant seamen rather than leave them to perish after his submarine, the Cappellini, sunk their ship in the Atlantic in October 1940.
Under naval conventions, warships attacking merchant ships were supposed to ensure the safety of those on board, but there were no set rules for submarines at the time, and in the height of war, such acts of humanity were rare.
De Angelis first heard about Todaro during a speech by Italian Admiral Giovanni Pettorino in 2018, marking the 123rd anniversary of the Italian Coast Guard.
Pettorino alluded to Todaro in relation to the coast guard’s contemporary role in rescuing migrants as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean for a better life in Europe.
“Pettorino, at a time when Italian ports were being closed to shipwreck survivors, and defenceless women, children and men were drowning at sea, needed to tell his sailors how to behave,” recounts De Angelis.
“He chose the road of the parable and told the extraordinary story of Salvatore Todaro, the Italian submariner who sank enemy ships during the war but saved men. This is what the law of the sea demands, this is how it has always been done, this is how it will always be done.”
Favino is joined in the cast by Belgian actor Johan Heldenbergh (Quo Vadis Aida, Broken Circle Breakdown) and fellow Italian actor Massimiliano Rossi (Indivisible, Gomorrah).
Comandante was originally announced in competition only at Venice but was moved into the opening slot after the world premiere of Luca Guadagnino’s Zendaya tennis drama Challengers was pulled due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Favino is a Venice habitué and won the festival’s Best Actor prize in 2020 for his performance in Padrenostre.
De Angelis was last in Venice in 2016 with Indivisible, which world premiered in parallel section Giornate degli Autori and then played in Toronto.
Comandante was adapted as a novel by Edoardo De Angelis and Sandro Veronesi, published by Bompiani.
The film is produced by Indigo film, O’Groove with Rai Cinema, Tramp Ltd, V-Groove, Wise Pictures in association with Beside Productions in collaboration with Paramount +.
01 Distribution will release the film in Italy and True Colours is handling international rights.
