RAI Cinema International Distribution has acquired world rights to Italian director Edoardo De Angelis‘ dark tragicomedy “The Fire Within You” ahead of its Venice competition launch.
De Angelis, a native Neapolitan, broke out on the festival circuit at Venice in 2016 with the Naples-set conjoined twins drama “Indivisible” and subsequently opened the festival in 2023 with anti-war epic “Comandante.” He also directed Netflix’s Elena Ferrante adaptation “The Lying Life of Adults” that year. He will now be back on the Lido vying for the Golden Lion with this more intimate piece, which revolves around the impact a toxic Neapolitan mother has on her progeny. The film is based on the prizewinning autobiographical book “Il fuoco che ti porti dentro” by Italian author and editor Antonio Franchini.
“Antonio left Naples many years ago and built a successful career and family life in Milan,” says the film’s synopsis. “He escaped not only from his hometown, but also from his mother Angela, a woman extreme in both her virtues and flaws: irresistible, deeply opinionated, conservative and fiercely confrontational. Now she has arrived for Christmas and seems determined to stay. What begins as a Christmas Eve dinner soon turns into an emotional battlefield, at once comic and merciless, bringing years of misunderstandings, resentment and old wounds to the surface.”
