28/03/2025 - Making a collaborative movie with children is a serious game, according to the trio of documentary directors

l-r: Stefano La Rosa, Virginia Nardelli and Danny Biancardi

The three directors behind The Castle [+see also:
interview: Danny Biancardi, Virginia N…
film profile], competing for this year’s DOX:AWARD at CPH:DOX, discuss the making of their whimsical observational documentary. As Angelo, Mery and Rosy build a sanctuary in an abandoned nursery somewhere in Palermo, Danny Biancardi, Virginia Nardelli and Stefano La Rosa play “the film game” with them.

Cineuropa: To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about the collaboration between the three of you, since The Castle is also very much a collaborative project with the children involved?
Virginia Nardelli: Danny and I met at the documentary film school here in Palermo. We are not from here, but we moved here to study. We ended up living in the neighbourhood you see in the film just by chance, but it lasted two years. Then, we met Stefano, who is actually from Palermo but lives in Paris. All of us have collaborated with director Stefano Savona, who is from Palermo, too. Having worked with him, we developed a common way of working.

Danny Biancardi: Like a method!

Stefano La Rosa: Yes, and the three of us fell in love with the neighbourhood, so we knew that we wanted to make a film with the people there. So, at the very beginning, we had decided to collaborate on this, and the film started building up gradually from that [decision].

Did you start with a more exploratory approach? When did you realise you had a film on your hands?
VN: You’re right – at first, it was completely explorative. Especially the first three years of shooting, even if we used a lot of that in the final film. Then, in the final year, we firmed up the overall narrative.

DB: Maybe it was when we found the three kids [who were the main protagonists]...

SLR: I would say it was the moment when we entered the ruined kindergarten together with the kids. We already knew the place, but we rediscovered it with them, just to play. When they asked us to build a house in it together, as part of the game, we felt there was a film there.

DB: Maybe when Mary wrote “casa nostra” [lit. “our home”] on the wall – that was a symbolic moment for us.

SLR: It’s funny because we imagined something like that might happen, and it did! It was magical.

What about the camera? Was it also a part of the games you played? How did you introduce it?
VN: The camera was a plaything for the kids from the beginning, I think. We were filming with a really small camera and no boom microphone – it was a really light set-up. When the camera was on, we’d play “the film game” together.

DB: Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t [laughs].

SLR: For us, it was always important for them to be equally involved in this process. We wanted to make a film with the kids, not just about them.

What was it like during the shooting, in more detail?
SLR: We would just follow them to see what kind of propositions they would make to us and what kind of things they wanted to play with. So, there were moments of silent observation and some bits that were a bit more… I wouldn’t say “staged”, but we would sometimes discuss their propositions before filming them. For example, at one point, the girls found this pocket mirror in the ruins and started playing with it. So, we asked them if they wanted to include something about it in the film, but they were free to do whatever they wanted with it.

VN: We would suggest playing “the mirror game” with them, but it was a game we invented together. Most of the time, it would only come from them and their imagination, so every day was different.