Italian-born Texas-based director Roberto Minervini is known for a distinguished career making documentaries including his so-called Texas trilogy comprising “The Passage,” “Low Tide” and “Stop the Pounding Heart.”
His most recent doc “What You Gonna Do When the World’s On Fire?” about a community of Black people in New Orleans during the summer of 2017, when a string of brutal killings of Black men sent shockwaves throughout the country, launched from the Venice competition in 2018.
“The Damned,” which is Minervini’s first feature film, is set during the American Civil War in the winter of 1862. The naturalistic war drama follows a troop of volunteer soldiers tasked with patrolling unchartered borderlands in western territories. “As their mission ultimately changes course, the meaning behind their engagement begins to elude them,” reads the film’s provided synopsis.
This film, which will premiere at Cannes in Un Certain Regard, is heavily informed by Minervini’s previous work and his experience of living in the American South for more than a decade, as he says in promotional materials. “It was a very conscious choice to go back to a moment where a lot of these roots were being planted: the great divide between North and South, Christianity, a kind of toxic masculinity,” the director adds.
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“I wanted to understand how these issues persist, why there is still a lot of nostalgia for the Civil War, how that time shaped a sense of distrust toward institutions,” he goes on. “I wanted the film to tie into the experience of people who were left in limbo during the war, in the middle of a transition from very conservative values to a new society: people who didn’t even know what to fight for.”
Minvervini goes on to point out that during the Civil War many in the U.S. Army were mercenaries who enlisted without fully grasping the cause.
“I’ve always had an issue with war movies because of the archetypes that are present in them,” Minervini underlines.
“The idea of the just cause, good versus evil, revenge, heroism. There’s never been an approach that I would call humane. Instead we have archetypes that propagate false ideas and beliefs about war. It’s crazy to me that people tend to trust a government — especially here in the U.S. but not only here — in matters of war and defense. War becomes an untouchable thing and the heroism of war becomes something sacred.”
“The Damned” is an Italian-American-Belgian co-production from Okta Film, Pulpa Film, RAI Cinema and Michigan Films. The cast includes rising talents Jeremiah Knupp, René W. Solomon, Cuyler Ballenger and Noah Carlson.
Les Films du Losange will distribute the film in France and is kicking off sales in Cannes.
