Valeria Bruni Tedeschi Wins Best Actress @ Tribeca Film Festival

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi has won Best Actress in the World Narrative category at the 13th edition of the of the Tribeca Film Festival, the film festival founded by Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal, for her performance as Carla Bernaschi for her performance in Paolo Virzi's Human Capital. The actress, who is Carla Bruni's older sister, is not a Tribeca newbie. Her debut film as a director, It's easier for a camel, won awards at the 2003 edition.


“In her elegant portrayal of a profoundly conflicted wife and mother,” the jury, comprised by Lake Bell, Steve Conrad, Bart Freundlich, Catherine Hardwicke and Ben Younger explained, “this actress crafts a complex performance of a woman wrestling between love, family and obligation. She layers both strength and fragility without self-consciousness, with a fearlessness to exercise both subtlety and restraint.”


Carla is a rich woman, a wife and a mother, with not much to do with all her money... she buys antiques just to do something, or rather, it seems that she goes to the antique store just for the company of its owner, another well to do woman. What else can she do with her time? Her pet project is the restoration of an old theater, but life gets in the way. “ Acting in this film has been totally natural,” Valeria Bruni Tedeschi said after her victory, “I felt welcome, at home, that's why working with Virzi is fantastic.”


Human Capital is a thriller that begins at the end, as a cyclist is run off the road by an SUV the night before Christmas Eve. As details emerge of the events leading up to the accident, the lives of the well-to-do Bernaschi family, privileged and detached, will intertwine with the Rovellis, struggling to keep their comfortable middle-class life, in ways neither could have expected. Dino Rovelli, played by Fabrizio Bentivoglio, in dire financial straits, anticipates the birth of twins with his second wife. Meanwhile, Dino’s teenage daughter’s relationship with hedge-fund manager Giovanni Bernaschi’s playboy son complicates an already tricky social dance of status, money and ambition. The film also stars Valeria Golino in the role of Dino's wife Roberta and Fabrizio Gifuni in the role of Carla's husband Giovanni.


“The film was inspired by an American novel, Human Capital by Stephen Amidon,” Virzi told i-italy in an eclusive interview during the festival, “We have adapted it taking lots of liberties but the heart of the novel is, of course, there. I really admire the author and I am a fan of his work, I think he is a young writer who has those special qualities that many great American “social” writers possess... through the thriller genre they actually portray, accurately, contemporary society. The story is about the consequences on people's lives caused by a value system where money reigns supreme, during the years of the financial crisis.”


Following Tribeca and a domestic festival run, the film, which will be distributed by New York based company Film Movement, will see a theatrical release in early 2015 and subsequent VOD and home video release.