The inspiration for the film was the stories Cortellesi heard from her grandmother and great-grandmother, often told with wry humour. “They measured their lives as wives and as submissive women to the husband,” she says. “Their stories were about women … ‘You remember that one? The poor thing, she was beaten by her husband. Oh, I heard the screaming in the house’.”
Cortellessi, 50, did not necessarily want to star as well as make her directing debut.
Romana Maggiora Vergano as Delia’s teenage daughter, Marcella, in There’s Still Tomorrow. Credit: Vision
“I have my producers’ trust but to do a film in black and white, set in the past, is a little more expensive than a contemporary comedy,” she says. “I’ve made many well-known and successful films but when I showed them the subject for the first time, the producers were a little bit scared – ‘Why? You’re a comedian. Let’s do some comedies’, ‘This is about violence in the past and in black and white, nobody will go to see it’.
“But I was convinced it could be a popular film because of the humour. I was convinced but, for a long time, I was the only one convinced.”
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Cortellessi says the film has encouraged audience members to reveal their emotional stories in Q&A sessions. “A man in Turin told me in front of hundreds of people in the cinema, ‘I used to be one of those kids. Our parents told us to go into [another] room, but we heard them fighting’. That was very moving,” she says.
“A woman told me, ‘I used to be Delia but no longer’. I’ve had the fortune to go to many places, from Sweden to South America, to Spain and France, and it’s always the same. People feel involved [recognising] physical violence and psychological violence ... You see the audience moved – getting emotional – about the same issues.”
Has the film changed anything in Italy?
“I would like that, but unfortunately not,” Cortellessi says. “A film cannot change things. But maybe some people felt allowed to speak about their lives and speak about women’s rights and the situation in Italy.”
She believes education is a key to reducing violence against women, which is why the film has been screened for tens of thousands of school students. “There needs to be education about this [issue] but every day, every week – not something that comes out only when there’s a murder.”
There’s Still Tomorrow is screening now at the Italian Film Festival in Sydney and Melbourne, and opens in cinemas on October 31.
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