These Italian Sisters are the Toast of the International Film Scene
It isn’t entirely unheard of for siblings to find success separately in the spotlight; look at Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine, Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, or even Beyoncé and Solange Knowles. When it comes to talent making their way from overseas to find acclaim in the crowded U.S. film market, however, it’s a much smaller club.
So, when the Italian-born sisters Alba and Alice Rohrwacher are honored this month at Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art with a dual retrospective called "The Wonders," celebrating their work in film, it’s worth taking notice.
Alice, a screenwriter and director who Variety called “Italy’s most prominent young director,” will screen her feature films (including opening-night selection Happy as Lazzaro, The Wonders, and Corpo Celeste) as well as collaborations with the fashion house Miu Miu and the projections she made for a 2016 production of La Traviata for Italy’s Teatri di Reggio Emilia. While Alba, an actress who’s worked for Luca Guadagnino and who the New York Times referred to as “one of the finest actresses of her generation,” will be represented by screenings of her films, including I Am Love and If Only, the debut feature directed by Ginevra Elkann.
Here, the sisters talk to T&C in advance of the retrospective (which runs through December 23) about their first North American retrospective, the upside of working with family, and how a childhood without film paved the way for an adult life immersed in it.
You've said that growing up—which you both did on an Italian honey farm—you weren't much exposed to film. How did you both end up working in the field?
Alba Rohrwacher: We grew up in the countryside. We lived in an isolated place where it wasn’t easy to get to the cinema; just as for the cinema, it wasn’t easy to get to us. We were not used to watching TV, but I still remember very well the first VHS movie tapes that I watched together with my dad. Novecento by Bertolucci, for example, was really upsetting for me. I was too young to understand the deep meaning of it, but those images are still imbedded inside of me since then like an indelible, violent, bewildering and magnetic moment—something that I was not maybe able to understand wholly, but which transmitted to me the magic power, the love that I have today for cinema. When I finally enrolled at high school at the age of 14 in Orvieto, the town nearest to us, it was then that the cinema truly entered my life.
Alice Rohrwacher: Yes, that is true, cinema entered my life late, maybe even later for me, when I was studying at the University in Turin. Until then it was something abstract and distant, both as a show to participate in and as images to be created. We never had a camera and I was afraid of it; I associated it with guns. But you know, living very isolated, in the emptiness and silence of those days, our imagination had already created many films! The images of reality and those of our imagination, together with music and books, populated our lives so intensely that, when the cinema arrived, it was like a gathering of many things we already knew, like a party where all our passions were invited.
What is it about movie-making that attracted both of you?
Alba Rohrwacher: The chance to go through stories I believe in. To interpret characters with their contradictions and secrets and to feel myself populated by all these lives. It's a great chance to love, to understand and welcome your neighbor. And then I also love the fact that this work is born from the creativity of a group of people. The director’s vision is the starting point from which all the other people involved bring their creativity.
Alice Rohrwacher: That's the way it is for me, too. In fact, what I love about cinema is the real work itself, which is still a collective effort, all done together. I really like to provide jobs for many people, deal with ideas and personalities so different from mine, and to ask so many people to meet and interpret other lives. Then I love to work with a large crew that loves a character who doesn't really exist, but of whom everybody speaks as if he were a common relative. And then, I love to have a small secret mission in the midst of all this chaos made of meetings and connections; that is to keep the little flame of the movie alive through ‘bad weather,’ to keep it bright through the research and writing phase, the set and editing phases, till it is given to the viewers. It's like being the guardian of a secret hearth that warms so many people.
Does having a sibling in the same industry help, does it hurt?
Alba and Alice Rohrwacher: For us it was all very natural. We both landed in the same work world even though we took different paths. From the beginning we thought this was very fortunate. We influenced each other, we helped each other, we advised each other. In this world, having someone close to you who knows your work and whom you trust blindly is an unparalleled good fortune. We can tell each other our strengths and weaknesses, support each other and help each other. We can clash and love each other, and this is an immense good fortune.
You've worked together on films including The Wonders, which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014, and Happy as Lazzaro, which won the award for Best Screenplay at the same festival in 2018. What's the experience like becoming colleagues in addition to family members?
Alba Rohrwacher: Everything seems to be simple, simpler than any other work situation. We do not even have to talk—we already know what the other is thinking and the work is fertile, joyful and natural.
Alice Rohrwacher: I remember the first time we worked together, even though Alba always followed me even in my first documentaries. However, we first worked together on The Wonders. I was looking for an actress to play the role of the mother. I had not thought of Alba, simply because she was too young to play the mother of four girls, one of which was already an adolescent. We had been looking for the mother for a long time but couldn’t find the right interpreter. One day I asked Alba if she wanted to accept this role... and it was incredible. Without saying anything, her way of imagining the mother and mine coincided. We have a common imagination. We know our strengths and our limitations, and we can go far.
You've made feature films, documentaries, and works for operatic productions and fashion brands. What's the through line to your projects? Is there one idea that brings them all together?
Alice Rohrwacher: If I have to find a thread that links these things, it is a blurred line that divides reality from imagination, as if it were a mysterious territory that if provoked can tell us about the really important things. To work in that realm—where the imaginary exists and is real, where the past and the present meet, where life becomes symbols—is my greatest desire.
Other than working together, what are the things you enjoy doing together?
Alba and Alice Rohrwacher: Growing up on a farm, working has always been an integral part of our lives, there was no difference between living and doing. There were no real holidays except those dictated by the seasons: there was winter hibernation and spring industriousness, there were the urgencies of summer, and the bustle of autumn. Therefore, we are accustomed to this type of work, which keeps us always present and attentive, always. It has been our way of life since childhood, our way of growing up, and certainly it is the way in which we manage to give the best part of ourselves—in creating together, in taking care of ourselves, in doing. Of course, together we also love to do other things: traveling, exchanging books, thinking about politics, exchanging clothes. But there is a common thread that binds us, and it is linked to a commitment that we have towards life, which is a way of being in the world and leads us to work together.
This is the first North American retrospective for you-what do you hope people take away from it? Is there anything specific you're excited to see again?
Alba and Alice Rohrwacher: We’re excited and honored to be at MoMA with our work of these past years. Whenever we think about this path so strange and adventurous, we are moved. It's an immense homage and what is even more shocking is that it is for both of us. Being here together gives us so much strength and makes us think about the many things that are still to be done, together.
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