Sophia Loren returns to the screens at the age of 86 in a film directed by her son

“I really enjoy working with my son, I love working with him. We have a common soul,” the actress said in an interview following the online screening of “The Life Ahead”, which will be officially released on Netflix. on November 13.

Sophia Loren, 86, whose last foray into cinema was Rob Marshall’s “Nine” (2009), answered with Ponti the questions of another Italian film legend, Isabella Rossellini, who testified. who feels a certain envy considering that he has never collaborated on a film with his parents, Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini.

“Your mother, Edoardo, was an example for me, a unique way of being a woman (…) Sophia showed us that Italian women are not submissive mothers, but proud women who keep their families together”. said Isabella Rossellini.

For her part, Sophia Loren explained that her mother was a great source of inspiration for her performance in “The Life Ahead”, a drama about an unusual friendship between a Senegalese immigrant teenager (Ibrahima Gueye) and an elderly woman. survived. Holocaust (Sophia Loren).

“I always wanted to be like my mother. She was a wonderful and strong woman, an incredible woman,” he said. “Madame Rosa had the same fragility and the same kind of emotions as my mother. In the Second World War, when I was little (…), my mother suffered a lot, but she never talked about it: even when she had died of fear, she was always with us, enduring terrible things, the bombings and the war in Naples “, recalls the actress.

The humanization of the myth

Edoardo Ponti, who during the interview exchanged many gestures of tenderness with his mother, tried to explain why we need to understand Sophia Loren beyond the myth she represents on the big screen.

“I think the reason people empathize with her when she plays is because she’s never felt comfortable with diva status – others have applied it to her, something she has never come to terms with.” the director said. the film and the son of Sophie Loren.

It is also the reason why he wanted first of all that Ibrahima Gueye, the first-time actor who hands Loren the replica in the role of the teenager Momo, not feel overwhelmed by the brilliance that the Italian star spreads around.

“It was very important for us to humanize my mother so that she didn’t see the myth, but the person. So we had the idea of ​​living together. For over eight weeks of filming, we all lived under one roof, and she saw my mother. every day and often they sat together on the sofa in front of the TV … In this way a deep emotional bond was created between them “, said the director.

Sophia Loren said she learned the secret to acting with newcomers from Vittorio De Sica.

“It would have been very easy for Ibrahima to get lost, even though he is a strong guy. It was the first time he was in a movie, in front of a camera, and everyone around him was staring at him. It was very difficult, but he liked it too. a lot (…) He was able to overcome his shyness and become one of us “, he concluded.