Maura Delpero, Queen of David: "Now I can go beyond Vermiglio"

A 'peripheral' director, as Maura Delpero defines herself, the day after the David di Donatello ceremony, which brought her seven statuettes for the film Vermiglio . Among these, the one for best director, an epochal award given that she is the first woman to receive the recognition. And that's exactly how it is, Delpero , born in 1975, was born in Bolzano and studied literature at the University of Bologna , the city where she then taught in some high schools and where she took her first steps as a director and author. Because it should be remembered that she certainly didn't arrive in the cinema seven months ago, when her Vermiglio won the Silver Lion in Venice . She has been in this world for 20 years, since 2005 when she signed the medium-length documentary Moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi. Four tracks from Ossigeno, about the Teatrino Clandestino show Ossigeno, followed in 2007 by his first feature film, the documentary Signori professori, which won the Avanti! award at the Torino Film Festival. The film started with a question: who still calls teachers signori professori? A title that ironically wanted to point out the social loss of prestige, as well as the economic disadvantage, of workers, many of them precarious, following the stories of young teachers, including in a middle school in Bentivoglio. Then there is Nadea e Sveta from 2012, which won the Cipputi Award from the Cineteca Bolognese, the story of two Moldovan women in Bologna, who make a living doing cleaning work and caring for an old lady, but whose heart is still in their country. In short, Maura Delpero worked a lot before landing the seven David di Donatello for Vermiglio – in 2019 she also shot her first feature film Maternal – and her education is Bolognese, which allowed her to experiment a lot and to found the production company Cinedora with the Bolognese director Leonardo Guerra Seràgnoli, Francesca Andreoli and Santiago Fondevila Sancet: another David arrived in the Best Producer category.

" I didn't fall from the sky - explains Delpero - I worked really hard, following an uphill path with a small mule ". And she continues: "I started coming from absolutely nothing, there was no direction, I made many mistakes and it took me a long time, for many years I was able to work half of what I would have wanted because I had to bring home the salary, but ultimately this path allowed me to experiment and freely find my own language". Even the documentary, a valuable cinema that until recently was not included among the David awards, as Delpero recalled on stage on Wednesday, was fundamental for her. "It allows some authors, both male and female, who are also interested in fiction, a great capacity and freedom of experimentation and great accessibility, so what is happening in these years, in which we see people appearing in the world of cinema who, like me, come from different arts and cultural places, has brought many new things: think that the other evening my editor who comes from the visual arts, who has done amazing work with Raffaello Sanzio, didn't know anyone".

So how does the journey continue now? "I will continue to work in the same way - says the director - hoping to regain concentration because for a few weeks I have been looking for my solitude and I have to, in short, close Vermiglio". And she admits laughing: "There was a moment in which I thought that if I won the David then I would have to go on with a lot of promotion, but I hope that this is the crowning achievement that will allow me to turn the page, also because I am receiving many proposals for projects that require a lot of time and evaluation. I have to find quality and I am turning down a lot but with great openness".