Conversation with Alice Rohrwacher: From Corpo Celeste to Lived Experience in Italian Cinema

In June 2012, a compelling conversation took place in Rome between Laura Di Bianco, a prominent scholar of film studies, and Alice Rohrwacher, the innovative Italian filmmaker. This exchange has gained particular significance for its profound insights into contemporary Italian cinema—especially the role and position of women within that space.

Laura Di Bianco, a professor and researcher at Johns Hopkins University, centers her work on Italian cinema, spatial theory, and the representation of gender in media. Her contributions to cultural criticism and feminist analyses of contemporary Italian film and literature have earned her a notable place in academic circles.

Alice Rohrwacher, an acclaimed Italian filmmaker and screenwriter, drew international critical attention with her debut feature Corpo Celeste (2011). Known for her distinctive visual language, poetic atmospheres, and deeply human engagement with social themes, her work stands as a significant example of Italy’s new wave of cinema.

This conversation, structured around Corpo Celeste, not only sheds new light on Rohrwacher’s cinematic style and vision, but also opens a broader space for reflection on the representation of women, the role of space, and lived experience in Italian cinema. What follows is the interview between these two voices.

Laura: As you know, I am doing research on films directed by women in Italy. It is only in the last ten years that women filmmakers have established their own place in Italian cinema. While watching movies directed by Marina Spada, Francesca Comencini, Roberta Torre, Wilma Labate, Paola Randi, Nina Di Majo, and so on, I came to observe how these women directors represent the city, an urban space that has always been entitled to men. The leitmotif of women’s identity is intertwined with the city’s identity. This subject matter is also central in your movie.

Let’s start with your career in filmmaking. You mentioned that you received a BA, and your cultural reference points are literature and painting. Can you tell me a little about that, and the circumstances that brought you to create your first work?

Alice Rohrwacher: I created my first work in a roundabout way, not expecting that I would do this. When I was a kid, I always dealt with images, photography, painting. Cinema, as a place and as a technology, was never part of my experience, of my family. There was never a video camera at my house; there wasn’t even a movie theater to go to where I grew up. In spite of that, I started by shooting a documentary about a river, the same exact river you see in my film Corpo celeste. Thanks to that, I met the producer Carlo Cresto-Dina. The documentary later became part of a collective film titled Che cosa manca.

It took me four years to shoot Corpo celeste. I always thought it was the right amount of time. I was under a lucky star when I met Carlo Cresto-Dina, who, like me, was making his first feature film. He was very brave, like all those that supported me, since I didn’t have much experience in filmmaking. All of them were nuts! Before then, I had only shot my own

“home-made” documentaries. My first time on a film set was actually the beginning of Corpo celeste.

Laura: How did you decide to set your story in Reggio Calabria? What relationship do you have with that city?

Alice Rohrwacher: I arrived in Reggio Calabria for personal reasons. It’s a city that I know very well, having lived there on and off. It’s a city that accompanied me, marked me not only in a positive way, but also in a negative one. I met the producer to talk about this place, which is where I was living at that time. We expressed the urgency to speak in no uncertain terms about the cultural genocide of a community. I wanted to tell a story through the lens of a place, a place that could also be abstract in a way.

What I can tell you about space is that I believe that the landscape a person looks at while growing up is extremely important. I don’t think beautiful or ugly landscapes exist, as they are all interesting in some way.

In this moment of my life, I believe that every experience is precious. The landscape is like a gauge that, when it changes, allows you to see things better. It was a big change for me to move from the Umbrian countryside, which is very well ordered, to Reggio Calabria. When I arrived at such a wild place, I felt like I was looking with “naked eyes,” so to speak.

It is also for this reason that shooting this film with Hélène Louvart, the French cinematographer, was extremely important. I truly wanted to tell my story through foreign eyes. I wanted somebody else, besides me, to be in this place for the first time, behind the camera.

Laura: Which is, actually, Marta’s gaze? What relation does she have with the city?

Alice Rohrwacher:  Marta enters and walks across a city that is unknown to her. Her body, her presence, scrapes the image of the city. When she walks she leaves a sign, gentle and clear at the same time. For this reason, Marta resemblances Yle Vianelle, the young actress playing her role, who moved to Reggio Calabria for the shooting. Just by walking, Yle was able to show us a place, defining it through her astonishment.

Laura: What about the role of the church in your film? What portrait of the church comes out of it?

Alice Rohrwacher:  I wanted to make a “coming of age” novel, and narrate it through the magnifying glass of the church. I didn’t want to confine my story to the church, but I wanted to open it by starting from a constricted place.

Earlier I used the term “cultural genocide,” a cultural emptying. Although the church is one of those few institutions still standing for the community, it lacks real questions, any real wondering. It is always about giving answers, a ceremony that lacks a rite.

Laura: Therefore your starting point was the city and the Catholic community with its rituals, especially the way it teaches religion to children, which ends up being grotesque in many ways. First of all, how did you get in touch with that reality? To what extent have you simply documented the facts, and to what extent have you reinvented that reality? Here I am referring to those funny scenes in which the kids take the tests on the Gospel, or when they sing songs like “Mi Sintonizzo su Dio” (“I tune myself to God”).

Alice Rohrwacher:  My starting point was the community that lives in the south of Italy.

From there I came to discuss the church. I began to attend catechism lessons. Believe it or not, it’s all true. I mean, through my eyes, it’s all true.

During catechism lessons children actually do quizzes on the Gospel. Yes!

The quiz exists; you can download it from the Internet. There is much more, but I didn’t want to get deeper into it, because reality is often too unbelievable. At one point the teacher asked a question, “Who constitutes the church?” The choices were: “the Pope, the priests, the immigrants, God’s people, or plants.” While I was shooting that scene, I said: “No one is ever going to believe it! Everyone will think that it is pure invention.”

Laura: Your film has the same title as Anna Maria Ortese’s novel. What is the relation between your film and the literary text?

Alice Rohrwacher:  I picked this title for its totemic value. In fact, I am a huge admirer of Ortese’s work and her Corpo celeste in particular was a fundamental reference point for me. I liked the idea that it was a good omen for the film.

At the beginning of her work, Anna Maria Ortese narrates her discovery of how the earth is suspended in space, as rightfully as the stars and all the other planets that we admire from afar. There is no need to go very far away, because we can feel the same amazement by looking at our own planet. We are used to this planet; we have been delivered to this planet.

That’s it! That was the good wish I wanted to dedicate to Marta: that the heavenly world is already here!

Laura: Tell me about the scene in which Maria is in the abandoned church and caresses the crucifix, indulging in observing it and removing the dust. That scene is quite intense, and uncomfortable in its own way. What is its function in the film?

Alice Rohrwacher:  That scene is the reason the film’s title is Corpo celeste, the heavenly body that everyone talks about, the one that is always far away, unreachable. When the catechism teacher reads the texts, she always says: “You have to think that the body of Jesus is not like yours; it is instead a heavenly body, perfect, distant.” It is quite the opposite; we can touch it. The idea is that the heavenly body is the planet. I wanted to shoot a scene in which Marta finally touches something, a body. Because by the end, Marta never touches anything. I wanted it to be a sensual scene, let’s say. That sensuality came out a little as I was shooting. After all, when a body touches another body, it’s always sensual in that it engages the senses, not that it’s erotic.

Laura: Now here’s a question that lies outside your work, concerning more generally women’s cinematic production in Italian cinema. In your  opinion, do women directors continue to be ostracized? Are women still expected to shoot certain kinds of movies?

Alice Rohrwacher:  In my opinion, the problem is on both sides, men and women. On one side, there is a tendency to take shelter behind the idea of being a woman, and the idea that as long as I’m a woman I’m persecuted. There is also a “womanish” interpretation of cinema; there is a willingness to combine in one film every possible feminine aspect for the sake of categorizing it under the label “woman.” I‘ll give you an example in translation, rather than cinema, though translation is still part of this discourse, in my opinion. I was lucky enough to be able to work with Pier Paolo Giarolo for a documentary on translators. I clearly remember an interview with Virginia Woolf’s translator, Nadia Fusini. A huge part of her extraordinary work was restoring Woolf’s original words, because many of the translations have been deformed by the lens of “womanliness.” For example, whenever Woolf wrote “she called her sons,” it was always translated as “she called her little ones.” Her harsh words were not appropriate for women’s collective imagination; therefore, those words were sweet-ened by terms of endearment. So, I believe that when it comes to films directed by women, something similar happens.

Laura: What can you tell me about the fact that so very few women have been able to take up careers as directors? According to research by Paola Randi, only 6 percent of Italian filmmakers who have directed movies in the last decade are women.

Alice Rohrwacher:  For a woman it is quite difficult to start, and to win the trust of a crew.

Then, when you finally do, there is a very strong connection. Anyhow, compared to Germany, where I live right now, it is undeniable that Italy is different—like whenever someone says, “Oh, that film by a woman director,” as if it were a rare event. This idea of the woman filmmaker as something extraordinary comes easily to us even if it’s hard to admit that and say it out loud. That’s why we are reluctant to have many women do this work. It is probably caused by fear of losing the privilege of being a minority.

Laura: Well, there is actually a small group of women directors in Italy now.

Does a dialogue among Italian women filmmakers exist?

Alice Rohrwacher:  I don’t know because I moved to Berlin right after I finished shooting the movie. I won a scholarship, and consequently I cut myself off from the possibility of having that dialogue. I got along very well with the ones I did meet though, such as Paola Randi, Anna Negri, Costanza Quatriglio, Irene Dionisio. In short, what I mean is that to be a woman doesn’t have to be a shelter, but a point of strength. Sometimes you have to build with sand as if it were stone.

Laura: As I told you, this interview will be part of a book titled Italian Women Filmmakers and the Gendered Screen. In your opinion, is there a way to see and represent women, a specific language, or a way to represent female subjectivity in Italian cinema that is different from the one so far offered by their male counterparts? If your answer is yes, how is the female gaze characterized?

Alice Rohrwacher:  The female gaze does exist; it is multifaceted and highly variegated.

The female gaze doesn’t belong only to women, just as the male gaze doesn’t belong only to men. However, I think that the women’s gaze on places is particular. Women have a different perception of places, houses, horizons. If I think of movies directed by women, I can see that space itself is always an important character that determines the development of the story. In my case, the city was the first character. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to work in that city, with the people I met there.

Laura: You represented an aspect of Reggio that is not very well-known on the screen: the less attractive side of the city, the dumping grounds.

Alice Rohrwacher:  I represented it in a certain way. I believe that it is worse to represent a stereotype of the south than it is to represent a contradiction of that. Also, the urban space outside the city is extremely important. The water—Reggio is a city rich with flowing water. I wanted to represent the city I came to know, the city I was living in. Also, I was a little motivated by rage, because I think those same 800 meters of seafront are not enough to make a beautiful city. Everyone uses those few kilome-ters of sea to show that Reggio Calabria is a beautiful city. “Beautiful” is probably not even the right word. The neat side of the city has become a cop-out to avoid seeing the rest. My idea was to produce a narrative about the city that could include its defects, to shoot a “flawed film,”

so to speak, without representing something that is already known, or something that would satisfy our preconceived notions of the south.

I arrived in Reggio when I was in my twenties. I know many of the marvel-ous things of the city and the region. Because I love these beautiful things, and I respect them, I don’t want to show them. I show only what I hope can be changed; I show what I hope people can see, anything that can open a debate. There was a lot of talking around the representation of the church.

Even that dispute, in my opinion, was positive because many people realized that Corpo celeste also represented a hope for change. To me, it is very important to work on what is considered “inappropriate,” to shoot movies that raise questions. By showing that side of Reggio Calabria, I wanted to push toward changing things, not just showing things. Corpo celeste was born in Reggio Calabria, originated by watching a space. Above all, I wanted to offer a narrative about a body in a space.