Vittoria, interview with co-director Casey Kaufmann at Cinema Made in Italy 2025

Ahead of a screening of his movie during the Cinema Made in Italy festival in London, Fred Film Radio sat down to a chat with co-director Casey Kaufmann to discuss all things "Vittoria". Emerging as a kind of trilogy alongside previous films based in Torre Annunziata, Naples, "Butterfly" and "Californie" , "Vittoria" tells the real-life story of Jasmine, a hairdresser who the filmmakers met while making "Californie". So taken with her and her tale of dreaming of wanting a daughter after having three sons, and going through the rigmrolol of adopting, that Kaufmann and his fellow director Alessandro Cassigoli not only wanted to share it on the big screen, but have Jasmine and her husband play themselves. Kaufmann shared what it was like working with the couple cast as their own characters, and how the movie sits in a liminal space between documentary and pure fiction. He also spoke about how the pair at times could use the mise-en-scène to in some ways confront buried aspects of their relationship and past. Furthermore, we talked about the role that fate and dreams plays in Jasmine's reality, without the film ever moving too far away from a grounded reality, and the journey the audience is taken on by following the badass, if not always readily likeable, Jasmine. Finally, Kaufmann reflected on the place the feature has within Italian cinema as presenting a specific and personal, yet universal story about a working class Naples family, and how, although their next film will finally take them out of Torre Annunziata, they have fond memories of all they learnt about filmmaking while telling stories in the region.