Kudos to Enzo d’Alò

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VERDICT: The acclaimed Italian animator is unveiling his first English-language film at the Berlinale in the Generation section.

Born in Naples in 1953, Italian director Enzo d’Alò has been a key name in the European animation world since his feature debut The Blue Arrow, released in 1996. That film, scored by famed singer Paolo Conte, also set the tone for d’Alò’s overall approach, rooted in adaptations of children’s literature from all over the world.

Having tackled his fellow countryman Gianni Rodari, he then moved on to Chilean author Luis Sepúlveda with 1998’s Lucky & Zorba, about a cat teaching a baby seagull how to fly (Sepúlveda lent his voice to the Italian version as the Poet, a character loosely based on him). A massive hit at the domestic box office, it remains the highest-grossing animated film produced in Italy to this day.

After that, Germany came calling in the form of 2001’s Momo, based on the book by Michael Ende (of Neverending Story fame). He then produced an original work, Opopomoz (2003), set in Naples, before tackling his passion project: an adaptation of Collodi’s Pinocchio. First hinted at in 2000 with a promo featuring art by Lorenzo Mattotti (now a director in his own right thanks to 2019’s The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily), the finished film premiered at Venice in 2012, with a dedication to singer Lucio Dalla who passed away shortly after completing the score.

Another Italian project appears to be on the horizon — he wrote the script for Nicola Barile’s upcoming film about Giovanni Boccaccio and his romance with Fiammetta, the illegitimate daughter of the King of Naples.

Now his first work not in his native language has brought him to the Berlinale, where he’s one of the key names in the 2023 Generation line-up. A Greyhound of a Girl  began its financing with the Film Fund Luxembourg, which granted it the highest amount ever given to a movie in Luxembourg (3.2 million euro).  A co-production between Luxembourg (which delegate produced through Paul Thiltges Distributions and put up 43% of the financing), Italy, Ireland, the UK, Estonia, Latvia and Germany, the film takes us on a journey to Ireland, with a relationship between a young girl and her grandmother that comes from the pages of the book of the same name by esteemed Irish writer Roddy Doyle. A hand-drawn meditation on family and the fleeting moments we share with our loved ones, the film boasts a stellar voice cast that includes the likes of Brendan Gleeson and Sharon Horgan, neither of them a stranger to the world of animation. Gleeson notably lent his talents to another Irish production, The Secret of Kells, while Horgan is a regular on Matt Groening’s Netflix show Disenchantment. It’s the sort of talent that adds to the pedigree of a story that, after its Berlin debut, will surely enjoy a fruitful festival career in months to come before hitting theaters, once again – and perhaps on a larger scale than ever before – cementing Enzo d’Alò’s status as one of the greats in animation.  —Max Borg