Film “Ice”: Fabrizio Moro and Alessio De Leonardis bring the world of boxing to the cinema

You fall and get up, in and out of the ring, because there is always something worth fighting for. Also for this reason boxing is not “just a sport”, but a real philosophy of life. It is found throughout the film “Ghiaccio”, the first written and directed by Fabrizio Moro and Alessio De Leonardis, where love, hope and redemption are embodied in sport, seen as a way to change one’s origins and his past, to redeem himself and find his place in the world.

This is what happens to Giorgio, played by Giacomo Ferrara, a young boxing promise who lives with his mother in the Quarticciolo district of Rome. We are in 1999, his father, murdered years earlier, left him a debt to the underworld. With the help of Massimo, ex boxer played by Vinicio Marchioni, Giorgio has the possibility to change his life, to choose whether to be good or bad. “Inside there are our adolescent doubts, the biggest question marks that a man asks himself – explains Moro-. There is anger, which catalyzed in the right way can be a weapon rather than an impediment, and there is love ”. The film (a La Casa Rossa production in collaboration with Vision Distribution) will be released in theaters on February 7, 8, 9 and also contains the song “Sei tu”, which Moro will sing this evening in the competition at the 72nd Sanremo Festival.

THE DIRECTORS

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“‘Ghiaccio’ starts from far away – continues the Roman singer-songwriter -. After having witnessed a match of Mirko Valentino (world champion amateur boxer in light weights and chosen as Giorgio’s challenger), I was convinced it was time to make a film about boxing. Alessio and I met for a video clip of mine, we had the desire to work together on this project, but I was always on tour and he was always on set. The pandemic gave us time to do it, finding in time record production, distribution and the whole sector “. But even if the story starts from the ring, then ends up in something more symbolic: “I like to describe ‘Ice’ as a great love story – underlines De Leonardis -, boxing was a mechanism to tell this love in all its nuances: that between a man and a woman, for children, for mothers and friendship. Who better than a boxer can tell the suffering, the feeling of falling to the ground and getting up, of coming to terms with himself ? The act of putting your hands on the ice means becoming aware that we deserved everything we did. ”

DE CAROLIS

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When you bring a sport like boxing to the big screen, you are faced with the difficulty of being credible. For this reason the two directors relied on Giovanni De Carolis, WBA world champion of supermedium weights, who in a very short time prepared Giacomo Ferrara and Vinicio Marchioni: “I was already convinced after reading the script – says De Carolis -. People people who are part of my world know certain dynamics, but people take the effort it takes to do this sport for granted. I was asked ‘how long do you take to prepare them?’, and I replied that it depended on them, they wanted and how meticulous they could put into it. They trained morning and evening, plus they had to study the film and obviously have their own life. It was an effort and a great sacrifice, but they made themselves available day by day, without never take a step back. We would have to write a book just to tell the behind the scenes of this film “.

THE ACTORS

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Two months to understand and savor the world of boxing: “They were months of transformation not only physical, but mental – underlines Marchioni -. The looks, the smell of the gym, the sweat, the spirit of sacrifice, the pain of the hands and of the legs, everything was fundamental to capture all that world and transport it into the film. ” And two months to become a boxer: “I had never boxed before and I learned to box with Giovanni – says Ferrara -. Anyone who practices a combat sport knows how few are two and a half months for adequate preparation. It was very hard. Double workouts, diet… Once we were ready it was easy to bring this fatigue back into the film because we had actually experienced it on our skin. I will never stop thanking Giovanni, boxing is a beautiful sport that I continue to practice now. I realized that a punch or a leg movement repeated many times for many days, take on a meaning that is brought back to everyday life: even a very simple action can lead you to something more important “. For example, the parallelism between boxer and actor, as explained by Marchioni: “Discipline, constant repetition that becomes automatism, love that makes you feel the need to sacrifice every fiber of your body … All this has a lot to do with our job. As Shakespeare said in Hamlet, our job is made to bend our will and our body until we believe we are something else. It was one of the most beautiful, most difficult, intense and profound professional journeys I’ve ever done. Now I really know what a pro is. “