Vera

Vera Gemma won Best Actress in the Horizons section at Venice 2022 for her compelling performance in Vera, in a role that partly mirrors her own life as daughter of Italian movie star Giuliano Gemma. In the film, which also won Best Director (Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel), Vera lives in the shadow of a famous father and drifts through Roman high society, tired of her superficial life and relationships. After she is involved in a traffic accident in the suburbs, she forms an intense relationship with an eight-year-old boy and his father. But soon she must realise that also in this world she is only an instrument for others.

We met Vera Gemma in 2015 while we were shooting our film Mister Universo; she was working on a documentary about circus artists, in honor of her late father Giuliano Gemma, a very popular actor in Italy. When she was introduced to us, I found her very strange, and we only exchanged a few words. Two weeks later we sat next to her at a dinner, and we had a wonderful conversation, because she has a very critical and ruthlessly honest way of calling a spade a spade. That was a good lesson, confirming yet again that it’s always necessary to look beyond the surface. I succumbed to her fascination very quickly, visited her quite often in Rome, read her autobiography and watched her father’s films. One day I told her I’d like to write a script about her.

Co-director Tizza Covi