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“You should feel free to be everything you want to be”. Words from Alessandro Borghi, the actor who captivated the Giffoni Film Festival this afternoon, answering questions from the young audience in the Sala Truffaut. Natural smile and humility are the two ingredients that characterize the actor who, in the past year, portrayed Rocco Siffredi in the series SuperSex but moved everyone in “Le otto montagne”. It’s the second time the actor has taken over the #Giffoni carpet, engaging with the kids and turning everything into a professional and life masterclass. Advice, requests, questions and a journey through his roles. An actor with a thousand shades who knows how to be unique and, above all, genuine. He speaks his mind and makes transparency his guiding star, even when explaining why he decided to portray Rocco Siffredi and the life story of the porn actor in SuperSex: “When people ask me why, I say I wanted to provoke some anger. I wanted to prod a hypocritical system where you can’t talk about sexuality in a certain way. They ask why I played a porn actor and not why I played Aureliano in Suburra who killed people. Here, making a porn film is worse than shooting people. I wanted to argue with people and I did because I didn’t let anything go. Rocco is someone who was part of a huge system where there was no regulation. He is now the first to question the things and methods used in those early years. Rocco has a huge heart, and getting to know him was incredible. It’s interesting to talk about sexuality here; I wish someone had talked to me about it. The only thing you need to do is feel free to be who you want to be regardless of everything; no one can tell you how to live your sexuality. They can try to protect you, like I will with my son. The world is full of wonderful things but also full of terrible things. I look at you and see the future, then I go out and see images of the war between Israel and Palestine, which means we are still unable to distinguish right from wrong. We are still overwhelmed by this stuff, and we must at least try to be among those who don’t do terrible things”. From the role of Stefano Cucchi to that of Rocco Siffredi, Borghi answered how it felt to play such different roles: “I learned that all human beings, even those who seem strongest, are extremely vulnerable. I really understood this by looking at Siffredi. He is someone who attributes his salvation to his family, and I understand that. I don’t feel saved by love, but I feel I’ve discovered parts of myself I never would have without meeting the woman of my life. What connects me to him (Rocco Siffredi) is the deep way of living everything, even at the cost of getting hurt. Accepting being vulnerable is not a weakness but a phase. From him, what can you learn? That a man who was stigmatized for 20 years by a system that pointed fingers at him is still a rigorous person with a very strong identity”.
A long meeting that also touched on a bit of “non-political politics” through the choices and the character of Stefano Cucchi portrayed in “Sulla mia pelle”: “I am not very politically active because I believe I still have things to resolve within myself; I don’t feel capable of steering anything. I express my opinions, but I don’t do active politics. Regarding Stefano’s case, all the thoughts I had before were confirmed but much more precisely and strongly. Ours is a country that deals a lot with labels and I am sure Cucchi would not have been killed if he had not been a drug addict. We were told to consider him different, some told us to consider him dangerous, especially compared to a complete lack of empathy, something unfortunately not taught in schools and we must learn it ourselves. Not everyone has this ability; unfortunately, we tend to judge things based on someone else’s ideas and thus reach conclusions without knowing anything about what we are talking about. This made me reflect a lot”. Borghi “teaches” the younger generation but has also learned a lot. He confirms this himself: “Remember to always feel like the least important person in the room; it is the most important lesson Peter Mullan left me on the set of The Hanging Sun. Many special encounters in my career, from Claudio Caligari to Valerio Mastandrea, passing through Luca Marinelli (with me in Le otto montagne, a film that marked me a lot), but the last one — with director Gianni Amelio — particularly struck me for his tenacity (a 20-year-old in the body of an 80-year-old). With him, I shot my last film, Campo di battaglia, which we will take to Venice”. Finally, advice for future actors and artists: “Always be good at selecting what you watch, quality, not quantity. For me, a good actor is someone who doesn’t act; otherwise, they are doing it wrong: it is necessary to free yourself from structures and do everything naturally. The secret is to make that thing yours”. The emotion of receiving the David di Donatello but, for Borghi, “today what matters is what we have around us and the network of people we have built, the esteem and recognition, authentic feelings of our life”. Finally, he received the #GiffoniAward, amid smiles, the enthusiasm of being at the #GiffoniFilmFestival again and the authenticity and simplicity he has maintained despite his great success.