The Taormina Film Festival kicked off this weekend with the world premiere screening of Mitzi Peirone’s Saint Clare, starring Bella Thorne, Rebecca De Mornay and Ryan Phillippe.
Introducing the movie in the hilltop Sicilian town’s open-air Teatro Antico, Thorne thanked attendees for supporting independent film “which makes our hearts soar” as well as her director for her “hardcore f*ck you I’m not gonna take no,” attitude.
This is a return to Taormina for Thorne after last year debuting a short film she directed and guest curating the festival’s ‘Influential Shorts’ evening. She’s also got a new short which screened here on Sunday, titled Unsettled.
That 15-minute film tells the real-life experience of Jason Parks, a young man who was drugged and abducted from a gay nightclub before escaping and seeking to bring his tormentors to justice. His story was not believed by authorities.
Thorne is embarking on her first feature as a director, Color Your Hurt, which she says will be a coming-of-age thriller that will follow Parks throughout 37 years. As a survivor of sexual abuse, Thorne tells Deadline, “I felt it was unfair to myself and all other survivors of having your whole story being this one horrible thing that happened to you. That’s really unfair and I thought if somebody did a movie about my life, me being molested growing up would be such a small portion of my movie.”
Thorne will incorporate footage from Unsettled into the feature.
There are some stylistic and genre parallels between Unsettled and Saint Clare. The latter is set in a small town where a solitary, young woman (Thorne) is haunted by voices that lead her to assassinate ill-intended people and get away with it, until her last kill sucks her down a rabbit hole riddled with corruption, the trafficking of young women and visions from the beyond. It’s based on Don Roff’s novel, Clare at Sixteen.
Thorne, who has been on and off sets since the age of six explains the similarities may come from the fact that she “reedited Saint Clare.”
This re-edit, which is the version that was shown in Taormina, Thorne says wasn’t planned, but she “didn’t like the way the first movie was edited — I think everybody was pretty unhappy with it. And then I was like, ‘I know these takes, I know there’s better stuff, I know it’s on the editing room floor. Let me take a stab at it and I’ll bring you a better project’”. Thorne worked with Peirone on the new cut and is negotiating for a credit. The film’s credited editor is Patrick Sanchez Smith.
Thorne “wouldn’t say there was no pushback,” but adds, “editing is such a fickle thing. If you get an amazing editor and you have quite a few sessions of really understanding the movie and talking about the movie with them, you do come out with a much better project.”
Saint Clare had formerly been set for domestic release via Screen Media, but that company’s owner recently filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy, so the film is now seeking U.S. distribution.
Thorne says she’s attracted by “social cue movies,” like Saint Clare, and particularly the indie space. “I think you just have less people to ask questions, and sometimes people asking too many questions can rip apart the art of something.”
Of Clare, she says, “We have to find all the empathy as much as possible for each character we play, even when you are playing a serial killer. But of course the brain naturally does judge itself in general, therefore you don’t want to completely not judge the character because the character is judging themselves in that moment and that’s one of the biggest parts of Clare. She is scared what she’s doing is wrong… So, for me, I think with Clare it was just about finding humanity but also finding anger, like how angry can you be in your heart to want to track people down and murder them? Luckily, we’re killing a bunch of bad men who are doing horrible things to girls so when we watch it we’re like, ‘Yeah!’”
The post Bella Thorne Talks Prepping Directorial Debut ‘Color Your Hurt’ & Why She Wanted To Re-Edit New Film ‘Saint Clare’ – Taormina appeared first on Deadline.
