Netflix VP content for Italy Eleonora ‘Tinny’ Andreatta says she is looking for content that goes beyond the stereotypes about the country that were formed by the success of Italian cinema in the 1960s.
“The biggest challenge we have nowadays is to overcome the big success that Italy had in the 1960s that created some stereotypes about our country. It was so huge,” Andreatta said on a panel at MIA Market in Rome.
“Now the ambition is to relaunch a more modern, more acutal, more true, more out of stereotype image of Italy.”
The 1960s is widely considered to be the golden of Italian cinema thanks to films made by directors such as Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Marco Bellocchio, Lina Wertmüller, Liliana Cavani and Bernardo Bertolucci.
Andreatta said Netflix likes ”to tell stories through the point of view of the younger generation” and that it is ”creating an image of women that is modern, complex, complicated – with women that not only desire to please every time.”
The exec said she wanted to portray Italian society as it is changing, looking at “families of blood, but especially the family you choose, the family you want for yourself.”
She also said Netflix Italy is looking for shows about people who are bigger than life, citing up coming shows such as Matilda de Angelis-starrer The Law According to Lidia Poët, Supersex about Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi and music doc Vasco Rossi: Living It. She also pointed to Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of classic novel The Leopard.
“We want to create stories that are really our rooted in our culture, in our country and our traditions – and we want to create authentic stories that can speak first for all to our audience at a local level, also through dubs and subs to arrive to the rest of the world.”
Andreatta said it was important to recognise the regional differences within Italy in its storytelling – citing The Leopard as being set in Sicily and Lidia Poët being set in Turin.
Netflix VP of content for Spain and Portugal, Diego Avalos, echoed this point on the same panel at MIA. “Authenticity for us in Spain means a lot of thing, but the most critical part is being hyperlocal.”
He said this meant recognising Spain as a country that has multiple languages and autonomous communities and “that we don’t just produce stories out of Madrid and Barcelona but we’re actually looking at stories throughout the country and showing the depth of storytelling culture.”
Also taking part in the MIA panel was Jenny Stjernstromer Bjork, Netflix’s VP of content for the Nordics, who flagged the ‘diverse’ and ‘relevant’ content the streamer is commissioning in the region that ’says something about where we are today.’
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