Filming in Tuscany is still synonymous with incredible countryside, rows of cypress trees, changeless hills.
Commercial makers from all over the world crowd here, beguiled by those magnificent images. But there are many varied reasons for coming to film in Tuscany, some even quite violent. Pictures of suburbs filled with terraced houses crammed with young families driven out of the old city centers, the complex and exhausting life in Prato’s Chinatown, the chemical beaches of Rosignano Solvay, the fights between bejeweled shopkeepers and black street traders in the center of Florence, the bus services that shutdown on Sundays, imprisoning young people in deserted villages, the discotheques of the Valdarno filled with Ketamine and Ecstasy, the wild boars chopped into pieces for restaurants, killed by paramilitary hunters, with walkie-talkies and snipers, the Nigerian prostitutes under the bridges of the freeways. There is life, in Tuscany. It is not just a stale nativity scene, thank goodness. And so there is also plenty of cinema to be made.

Francesca Archibugi

Cinema&Video International    5-2007