Vanessa Kirby, Oscar-nominated actress in Italian Studies, stars in the film. Adam Leon, a native New Yorker who directed the film, shot it on the streets in New York in 2018, just before the pandemic.
Kirby plays Alina, who is a writer who suddenly loses all her memories and wanders the streets. She meets several New Yorkers as she tries to find her way home.
Leon claims that he shot the film in Manhattan as well as the outer boroughs.
What you need to know
- Italian Studies was shot in New York City, before COVID-19
- Vanessa Kirby, who was nominated for an Oscar in 2021 for Pieces of a Woman says that Italian Studies is not a film about memory loss.
- Director Adam Leon claims that he studied Italian Studies in Manhattan and other boroughs.
Leon said that we shot stuff on Canal Street where there were thousands of people around Alina. On July 4, we shot fireworks at Long Island City. We then shot after the fireworks. But, then, we explored and found very unusual places.
Kirby said she loved shooting in New York City and now realizes that they captured a moment in New Yorkers’ lives not since COVID-19 in 2020.
Kirby said, “I love the city so much.” It has always been special to me. It feels like a period piece, even though it is wild. You can see the difference between the crowds I was in and the crowds I was in before 2018. We didn’t know what was coming.
Although Italian Studies is not a film about memory loss, Kirby still did extensive research on the subject.
All of it was very useful, except Adam. [like]Kirby said that I don’t want to see you portray a person who has lost their memory. I want you to be a state of being. That’s really difficult because you can no longer hold on to rigid things. As a character, you must assert yourself in this world as someone who is willing to let go of all that.
Leon stated that they wanted to study the effects of the environment on identity.
This was something we talked about a lot, how our environment, our interactions with it, and our disconnections from it all influenced who we were at that moment and overall. We wanted to capture that idea in the movie.
Italian Studies is on-demand and in theaters.