Venice Silver Lion Winner Maura Delpero on Conceiving ‘Vermiglio’

For “Vermiglio” director Maura Delpero, winning Venice Film Festival‘s Silver Lion grand jury prize is a dream born from a dream.

The drama is set at the end of World War II in an Alpine village, where the arrival of a soldier causes disruption in the dynamics between three sisters. “Vermiglio” marks Delpero’s follow-up to “Maternal,” which takes place in an Argentinian refuge for teenage mothers run by nuns and made a splash on the festival circuit.

Venice jury president Isabelle Huppert praised “Vermiglio” for being a war story in which you never see war. “It’s like you have a great offscreen subject matter, but you get to see what’s going on only through a small eye, through the latch of a door,” she noted at a press conference.

Following its Venice bow, Delpero’s striking sophomore work is segueing to Toronto and has already been selected in a slew of other fests around the world.

Delpero spoke to Variety in Venice, a few days before “Vermiglio” scooped the Silver Lion, about her deeply personal connection to the film.

How did “Vermiglio” germinate?

It’s the most personal film you could ever imagine. It stems from grief for my father’s death, which was a sad moment. But the film comes out of a very happy event: a dream. Shortly after his death, my father came to visit me in a dream in which he was a small child. He appeared like in a photo I knew of him, toothless, smiling. And he was in his childhood home in the mountains. So I began to write, but at the beginning it was just me needing to write to overcome this [grief]. It was a personal elaboration. And it was nice, because for the first time, I was writing about him and his siblings when they were children. Of course the writing was being done by me, who as a child, always saw them as being old and big. It was an interesting reversal of roles. In writing, lots of images came to me, so at one point I said: “OK, maybe this is a film.” But at first, I wasn’t sure that it could also be universal. Subsequently, I realized that it could because it’s about crucial events in life. And it’s about a point in time when you have to survive war; when you have to be able to eat and feed your children, and try to make them study and then overcome this war period. And then subsequently overcome the deaths of babies, so everything is urgent. This makes it transcend our [present] space and time.

Aside from the story, what’s striking about this film is how it steeps the viewer in the rural mountain world of that period. Tell me about your immersion process.

It’s a method I have. I come from documentary and I also use it for fiction films. It’s really part of my creative process. To write, I go to the place [where the film is set] and I do lots of things that sometimes can seem exaggerated. For example, I slept in the bed where my grandmother gave birth to 10 children – it’s still there – in winter, to feel the cold. I also went to places like barns and bars, men’s bars. It’s funny because I was pregnant and they offered me lots of wine and I couldn’t accept. But it was interesting. It helped me to write, to prepare and to do pre-casting. I chose every face that’s in the film. Even the extras. And they are all people who would never come to a casting call. It’s beautiful because some of them are really stuck in time. It’s not just a matter of how you look and how you move in a space. It’s also how you talk. The use of dialect is crucial for this film.

Connected to that, how do you work with your actors? Do you workshop?

First of all, I love working with actors. And I love to work with them ahead of time, before we shoot. The casting process is very important and while I cast, I also rehearse. And I take a lot of time with that, not just with non-professionals, but also with well-known actors. In this case, I asked one of the actresses to help me become a family. We did a breakfast together, we played games, we worked on physical proximity. In one case I came on set and thought, “How can I elicit the surprise and enchantment that the children experience when they hear the music of Vivaldi at school?” So before the camera rolled, I asked them to identity the sounds that define each season [in Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”].

I’ve heard that after Toronto, lots of other festivals are lined up. Talks to me about the film’s journey going forward.

I don’t know what I can reveal, but I know we are playing in some 20 festivals around the world. I will try to travel as much as I can, though I have a very small baby. I will do my best because I love to meet the public. And I’m happy because the response I’m getting is the definitive confirmation that the film is universal. It’s just my father’s tiny village that speaks to people and elicits emotions. I am starting to see the emotion in people’s eyes, and it’s really magic.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.