Twin directors Damiano and Fabio Dinocenzo, known to Berlinale audiences for their gritty dramas “Boys Cry” and “Bad Tales,” return with the eclectic detective series “Dostoevskij,” which premieres in the festival’s Berlinale section.
Set in the Roman hinterland, the six-episode series – produced by Sky Studios with Rome’s Paco Cinematografica – stars Filippo Timi ( Vincere, The Eight Mountains ) as Enzo Vitello, a policeman whose mind is warped by an incident involving his daughter Ambra. He ends up on the trail of a ruthless serial killer, nicknamed Dostoyevsky because of the letters full of horrific details he leaves at the crime scenes. Haunted by the killer’s words, the cop embarks on a dangerous solo investigation, drawing closer and closer to a disturbing existential truth.
Courtesy Skye
“Dostoevskij”, which marks the television debut of the D’Innocenzo brothers, grew out of asking Sky Studios Italia head Nils Hartmann if they wanted to create a show and giving them carte blanche from a narrative point of view.
Fabio recounts: “We just asked them what genre they wanted and they said: a suspense novel,” and then “in half an hour we wrote the essence of Dostoyevsky’s novel on one page.” Obviously writing the screenplay was much more complicated.
As for Dostoyevsky references, Damiano says, “We didn’t have any, which is an approach I would highly recommend to any filmmaker moving into television.” However, the directors tried to divide the six-episode script into three acts, just like the film.
Interestingly, Sky did not ask them for any details of the scene, nor did they try to manage the production details of the show in any other way. “Hartman and his team were a good football coach who understood that as artists – if we can use that word – we are the type of players who need to feel comfortable on the field with none of us breathing,” Damiano says.
As for casting, Timmy playing Enzo was crucial. Although they wrote the show with Timmy in mind, the directors asked the actor to lose between 10 and 15 kilograms because the tortured detective “suffers from an upset stomach,” Fabio said. “We also wanted his entire body to be as rough and bare as the landscape in which the show was set.”
“Dostoevskij” marks the D’Innocenzo brothers’ first collaboration with cinematographer Matteo Cocco, with whom the duo recently filmed the music video for Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign’s “Talking/Once Again,” which features a clip of West’s song 10. — 10-Year-Old Daughter year.
“It’s a very intimate father-daughter video, and we just wanted to leave the stardom out of it,” Damiano says. “It’s really about being human.”
As for working with West, Damiano says, “He’s really a great inspiration to us. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone work that hard, nonstop. He never sleeps. It’s unbelievable. And the amount of physical strength he puts into his work is amazing.”
Filming the music video was intense. “As you well know, (in Italy) while filming for 10 hours, you get some rest,” he adds. “But you don’t seem to need it.” So they keep moving forward.
Watch the video for “Speak/Again” below.