Alice Rohrwacher

Member of the 'Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' (AMPAS) since 2018.

[press conference for La quimera (2023) at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival] Ever since I was a child, when I was very, very young, I thought a lot about the region where I lived - Tuscany - and there was something which was absolutely obvious. There were other populations that had lived in this region in the past. And that always impressed me. If you dig a bit in the earth, you find all sorts of objects and artefacts made by hand, made by other men. In particular, in the 80s and 90s, there was something that was fairly usual then in the region - looking for treasures, archaeological artefacts, hidden treasure in the Etruscan tombs. The Etruscans lived in the region a long time ago, well before us, and there'll probably be other civilisations that then live in the region after us. This activity, this search for archaeological artefacts always intrigued me. It wasn't legal of course; it's illegal to steal archaeological artefacts and it goes against the souls of the people who have died, so I wondered how we could depict people who stole from the tombs, who stole these artefacts. So we talk about this world, during the day, at night, the relationship between those who're alive, those who were dead - the relationship between the past and the present.