Those who know the real crime chronicle of the “canaro della Magliana“, which Dogman is inspired by, will certainly notice, after seeing it, that the film does not want in any way to reconstruct the facts really happened, but it offers us the chance to know them partly through the crude reality of an Italy no man’s land stripped of everything, where on the edge of a suburb there is Marcello, a humble man who, after the umpteenth overpowering, will plot an unexpected revenge.
The 2018 film was a huge success awarded at the Cannes Film Festival, winning 7 Nastri d’Argento and 9 David di Donatello along with other prizes and many nominations, arriving at the box office with €2.6 million.
Nicolai Brüel, director of photography, directed the shots following a predefined colour palette that would inspire the same atmosphere through natural and artificial light; the first colour that emerges is blue, an acid blue that tends towards green from which we capture a feeling of glacial but also impressionable cold, two fundamental contrasts that we find in the main protagonist.
The primitive and wild dimension on which we are catapulted is the same that the photographer Billy Cress shows us through his shots. The empty streets, the abandoned buildings, the objects left on the edges of the streets are the signs of a world populated and linked to men in which, however, they appear only rarely, almost by chance.
Billy’s attention, and consequently his lens, are captured by the places that surround him, trying to give life to photographs in which peace, calm and quiet are the master.
If the film tells us a story that really happened with characters and a well-defined plot, his photographs do not necessarily document the facts, but lend themselves as stages where imagine them.
Did you know: Director Matteo Garone pushed Marcello Fonte to drink whiskey before performing some scenes, so that he can be more easily in the mood of the character he played in
Genre: Thriller
Director: Matteo Garrone
Director of photography: Nicolai Brüel
Writers: Ugo Chiti, Matteo Garrone
Stars: Marcello Fonte, Edoardo Pesce, Nunzia Schiano
