Screenings

Toni, mio padre

Tony, My Father

Anna Negri

Country

Italy

Year

2025

Length

109'

Screenplay

Anna Negri in collaboration with Stefano Savona

Cinematography

Stefano Savona, Christopher Gallo

Editing

Ilaria Fraioli

Music

Giulia Tagliavia

Sound

Marzia Cordò

Production

MIR Cinematografica, Videa Spa, Mediaart

Distribution

Wanted Cinema

In collaboration with

Fondazione Home Movies - Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia

Synopsis

When Anna was 14 years old, her father was arrested and accused of being the hidden leader of Italian terrorism, charges from which he was later acquitted. After four years in prison and fifteen in exile, Toni Negri became a world-renowned thinker, and his arrest just one chapter in an extraordinary life. But for Anna, this story left an indelible mark.

The film thus becomes the tale of the wounds of two generations, both intimate and collective. Anna and Toni meet again in Venice, both in front of the camera, filmed by a friend. Toni knows he is seeing this city for the last time—he will die six months later—and Anna, who has never lived with him since his arrest, accompanies him in an attempt to recover lost time.

It is within this new dimension of travel and mutual discovery, reduced to a few gestures and essential words, that we witness the unraveling of the last knots, the doubts, and the meanings of two such complex lives.

Biography

Anna Negri was born in Venice. At the age of 18, she left Italy and moved to Paris, where she began working as an assistant director. She later studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Groningen, the Netherlands, and in London, where she graduated in Film from the London College of Printing and earned a Master’s degree in Directing at the Royal College of Art. In 1998, she returned to Italy to direct her debut feature film, In principio erano le mutande (At the Beginning There Were Underpants), which was selected for the Forum section of the Berlin Film Festival in 1999. Between 2000 and 2021, she directed five television films and two series for Netflix. In 2008, she directed her second feature film, Riprendimi (Good Morning Heartache), which competed at Sundance. In 2009, she published her first novel, Con un piede impigliato nella Storia (Feltrinelli). Since 2017, she has been teaching directing at the Gian Maria Volonté School of Cinematographic Art in Rome.

Statement

Toni, My Father is a very personal, biographical and autobiographical film, in which the Venetian present, shot by Stefano Savona, intertwines with interviews, home movies, photographs, and my own Super8 footage filmed from the age of sixteen onward. These materials, edited by Ilaria Fraioli and set to music by Giulia Tagliavia, tell a personal story into which official History forcefully entered, evoked through television archives and newspaper headlines.

For me, the challenge was to succeed in recounting such a layered life while identifying its essential traits. At last, I could try to understand that revolutionary mindset of the last century and raise questions about the ethics of violence or about how one faces defeat.

Our relationship, which unfolds as a parallel narrative – perhaps even the more compelling one – thus became the narrative device that allows universal themes to emerge, such as the conflict between ideology and life, and also that between generations and genders.

— Anna Negri

Archival materials

Fondazione Baruchello, Teche Rai, Archivio Nazionale Cinema Impresa, AAMOD – Archivio Audiovisivo Del Movimento Operaio E Democratico, Fondazione Home Movies – Archivio Nazionale Dei Film Di Famiglia, Cinescatti – Lab80, Royal College Of Art, Anna Negri Private Archive.

Screenings

Fri 26.09.202521:45–00:00

Toni, mio padre

Special screening

Film screening

Q&A with director

Cinema Modernissimo

Piazza Re Enzo 1/1

Ticket fee

Extra

Trailer