Beyond Privilege: Andrea De Sica on Children of the Night

Beyond Privilege: Andrea De Sica on Children of the Night

With his debut feature Children of the Night, director Andrea De Sica steps out from the considerable shadow of his legendary grandfather Vittorio De Sica to forge his own cinematic path. In this candid conversation, De Sica discusses his artistic choices, cinematic influences, and the complex burden of carrying one of cinema's most revered names.

Your debut film focuses on privileged youth rather than the marginalized classes typically depicted in Italian cinema. What drew you to this choice?
This was deeply personal for me. I come from a good family, attended the best schools in Rome, and I wanted to approach the reality I knew best. Usually when Italian cinema depicts rich kids, there's this cold judgment, this perspective that makes them unpleasant. I wanted to be as sincere as possible, to empathize with these characters because ultimately this is a film about friendship. Since this reality is close to me, I don't have preconceptions—I haven't constructed a vision from a distance.

The film blends realism with almost fantastical, lyrical elements. How did you arrive at this stylistic approach?
The film started from a very realistic basis. I have people dear to me who've been in boarding school recently—they had heated minds, were quite unbridled, and lived with life-and-death intensity. I visited these schools, met teachers, observed their daily routines. But I felt that taking a purely sociological approach would have been limiting. Instead of reproducing a real school, I chose a grand hotel in the mountains—this metaphysical feeling of being outside the world where I could invent a universe. I prefer inventing to reproducing what I've seen.

Your film contains echoes of Suspiria, Lynch, and Antonioni. How do these influences shape your work?
I'm a child of postmodernism, which says reality doesn't exist—there's only our mental construction of it. But more personally, I've been a cinema addict since childhood. My father, who's no longer with me, shared this passion. Our deepest communication was through watching films together. Cinema was my catechism, my school. This cinephilia creates a kind of collage that builds an atmosphere of nightmare and tension—that's where the film's spirituality comes from.

How has carrying your family name affected your filmmaking journey?
Half burden, half blessing. There's beauty in this legacy—watching my grandfather perform in "Bicycle Thieves" and seeing how my perspective on the same film changes over time. Initially, I felt the weight of expectations. But once I created my first works independently and earned respect from my father and family, I relaxed. The crucial thing is not to distort your impulse. I fought to make this film strange, sometimes incomprehensible, because my debut had to be uniquely mine. It's both a responsibility and something I simultaneously understand and don't understand.

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