The much-awaited series based on Elena Ferrante’s masterpiece is set to hit our screens—and the whole world’s!—on 19th November 2018. It will be broadcast in the UK on Sky Atlantic.
When the most important friend in her life seems to disappear without trace, Elena Greco, an elderly woman living in a house crammed with books, switches on her PC and starts writing her own story, and that of Lila. She tells the tale of their friendship, which started at school in the 1950s. Set in a dangerous but fascinating Naples, it is just the start of a story spanning sixty years of life. A tale that attempts to unveil the mystery of Lila, Elena’s brilliant friend. Her best friend, and her worst enemy.
The HBO-RAI Fiction and TIMVISION series is produced by Wildside and Fandango, in co-production with Umedia. All the episodes are directed by Saverio Costanzo (whose credits include the lm Hungry Hearts). The story and screenplays are by Elena Ferrante, Francesco Piccolo, Laura Paolucci and Saverio Costanzo. Paolo Sorrentino and Jennifer Schuur are the executive producers.
The production has been a huge undertaking, with 150 actors and 5,000 extras, many of them young non-professional actors recruited from local schools; and a set built from scratch and comprising several building, a church and a tunnel. The neighbourhood was recreated from scratch, with a 150 strong production troupe creating a huge set including 14 buildings, a church and a tunnel, as well as several sets of interiors.
The narrating voice is that of Alba Rohrwacher, who appeared alongside Tilda Swinton in Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love, and was awarded a Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival for her role in Hungry Hearts.
It will be in Italian with subtitles. In fact much of the dialogue is in Neapolitan dialect (unlike in the novel, where dialect is signposted but not actually much used), so the series will be subtitled for Italian viewers too!
