“A is for Alice” is the first dystopian film by former Film student Sharon Grace Badia.
Sharon Grace Badia, a young up-and-coming filmmaker and former RUFA student, makes her debut with a SciFi film almost two hours long, entirely shot in Abruzzo, more precisely in the impervious area of Castrovalva. The cast, almost entirely female, involved international actors and performers, including protagonists Valerio De Prosperi and Sabine Pendry, actress Beatrice Stella, belly dancer and sculptor Lucia Andreozzi, and musician Emanuel Accattoli.
“The idea came to me in 2019 while I was writing my thesis,” says Sharon, “The film portrays a dystopian world very close to us. People hibernate every November and wake up in spring. The main character, a nineteen-year-old boy named Stefano (Valerio De Prosperi), is forced to face the hibernation period in the isolated house of his stepmother, his father’s new partner.”
The young protagonist cannot accept the death of his mother, and the fact that his father wants to move on. The absence of the mother figure awakens in the young man a strong fear of loneliness. His worst nightmare comes true when he discovers that he is the only human to have awoken too early from hibernation. Or at least he is convinced of this, until he comes across Alice (Sabine Pendry), co-star and character inspired by the novel ‘Alice in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll.
The main themes of the story are isolation and environmental pollution, the hibernation being due to the earth’s resources running out.
“It was very complicated to shoot with snow,” says Sharon, “but Castrovalva is the perfect setting because in the winter season it is inhabited by about ten people. The most used colour is the cold blue, which creates loneliness and alienation. The film is influenced by ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ (1920), belonging to German Expressionism, for the gothic style, the dark tones and the anguished feeling with which the grotesque thriller ‘A is for Alice’ is imbued. The actors come from different countries: Italy, the United States, France, Belgium, Congo, Saharawi, Lebanon and China, with casting taking place entirely online.”
The feature film is on its way to various festivals, mainly in the Anglo-Saxon world, and will later be accessible to a wider audience through various streaming platforms.
Watch the teaser
