The successor

The successor

Original production

2015

52"

Vito Alfieri Fontana is an engineer and former owner of Tecnovar, a company specialised in the planning and sale of anti-personnel mines. Following a profound existential crisis, engineer Fontana doubts himself, his job and the relation with his family, especially his father, a lumbering but charismatic person. The weight of succession and responsibility fights with the need to stop the landmines production. A question keeps bothering him: how many victims has his job with Tecnovar made? The answer to this question turns dark for mister Fontanam but it is the starting point of an existential journey from Italy to the former war zones in Bosnia Erzegovina where to this day teams of deminers are active to keep the land safe. In the conflict between duty and conscience a man moves looking for his chance for redemption, but is still aware of the balance between good and evil can never be.

Direction: Mattia Epifani
Executive producer: Davide Barletti
Film script: Francesco Lefons, Mattia Epifani
With: Vito Alfieri Fontana, Nijaz Memic, Senaid Abdihodeic
Photograpy: Giorgio Giannoccaro
Editing: Mattia Soranzo
Music: Gabriele Panico
Sound: Gianluigi Gallo
Production manager: Emanuela De Giorgi
Production: Fluid Produzioni Apulia Film Commission

Broadcasters

  • Rai Storia

Festivals

  • Göteborg Film Festival 2016: Italy in focus
  • Hot Docs 2016: the Pursuit of Happiness
  • Slamdance Film Festival 2016: Beyond
  • IDFA – Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2015: Competition for Mid-Length Documentary
  • Torino Film Festival 2015: Italiana.doc – Premio Cipputi

Epifani puts together a movie which is at the same time narrative and against a classical and linear narration, everything is suspended in a dreamy haze which explores the past as if it was a physical place.

S. Grasselli (Fabrique du Cinéma)

Mattia Epifani’s The Successor reminds us of the resources of change, of the way life reshapes when you live it as it is predestined.

M. Schiavoni (Quinlan)

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