Actor and singer Juan Pablo Di Pace chatted about his new film “Duino,” which he co-wrote and co-directed with Andrés Pepe Estrada.
Working with Andrés Pepe Estrada
“The movie has been three years in the making,” Di Pace said. “I co-directed it with Andrés Pepe Estrada, my longtime friend. We met at 12 years old when we were in high school.”
“We used to do short films together and we were the film geeks of the school. He became an amazing, prolific editor. He went on to edit the film “Argentina, 1985,” which was nominated for an Oscar two years ago,” he said.
“Three years ago, I told him that I was ready to do a feature film with him, which is something we talked about doing for years,” Di Pace said.
Idea for the film
“It was 2020, it was the right story and the perfect time to do it because everybody was at home due to the COVID pandemic,” he said. “I was just hungry to get going, so I wrote this script, which really came about after a female friend of mine asked me what my first love was.”
Di Pace continued, “As I told her my story, she told me that it was a movie and that I should write about it. This was the easiest and fastest script I wrote. It is loosely based on an event that happened to me, but there is a lot of fiction in the film.”
“It talks about young love, memories and how we romanticize important memories in our lives. It deals with four important elements: present, the memory of the past, the actual recorded past, and the recreation of a memory,” he explained.
Di Pace stars as Matias in the film
“The main character, Matias, is in his 40s and he is making a movie, or struggling to make a movie about this event, which happened in his youth,” he noted.
“So, it has been a bit of a puzzle,” he admitted. “There were a lot of things I needed to fit and get right. It’s an intricate story like the weaving of a tapestry in a way. It has been a journey.”
Closing thoughts on ‘Duino’
For viewers and fans, Di Pace remarked, “I just want people to immerse themselves in the story. It’s a very tender and layered story. It is also very universal because we all fall in love for the first time with a certain person, which is possibly elusive and unfinished.”
“We all have parents, and the movie deals with parenting quite heavily, and what’s it like to deal with complicated situations when you are a parent. This movie is like a yarn ball,” he concluded.
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