Lunch with Semiliberi (Half Free)

Interview with Elettra Pierantoni, scriptwriter of Semiliberi (Half Free)

  What do you mean by Semiliberi? Would you say Alessandra is “half-free” after what she decides to do?
Semiliberi is a play on words and it means that Alessandra will be half free, but the word “semi liberi” also stands for “free semen” so it’s a pun which refers to the prisoners’ clever plan.

Is this common practice in prison? What sort of research did you do into the subject?
The prisoners’ plan is not so common, but it comes from a real event which happened in Italy. We have done some research. We made a documentary in a prison in Florence and there we learned about the weird way of communicating between men’s and women’s prisons. For instance, the prisoners share information through the window using white handkerchiefs during the day and lighters at night.

What are your plans for the future?
The Semiliberi team is working on a new short about immigration. Although this topic is hard to describe in an unusual way, we are trying to keep our narrative style.

Any cinematic coups de cœur in the past year you’d like to tell us about?
We saw Andrea Arnold’s latest film American Honey at Toronto Film Festival. We loved it, it’s an anarchic journey with an amazing point of view.

Semiliberi is being shown in International Competition I10.