All’s honest in love, battle, and the flip of a coin. Italian Western “Heads or Tails?” turns again time to seize the famed “Wild West Present,” hosted by Buffalo Invoice (née William F. Cody), which introduced the parable of the American frontier overseas. In a twist of divine casting, John C. Reilly performs the enduring Buffalo Invoice. The characteristic premieres at Cannes this 12 months within the Un Sure Regard part as a gross sales title; that is Reilly’s current return to the competition, because the star was beforehand the president of the Un Sure Regard jury for the 76th version in 2023. Watch an unique clip within the video above.
Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis co-direct “Heads or Tails?,” which facilities on how Buffalo Invoice’s Wild West Present adjustments the angle of Italian girl Rosa, who’s trapped in a stifling marriage to a strong and violent landowner. Per the official synopsis, “When a rodeo between American cowboys and Italian butteri ends in tragedy, Rosa flees with Santino, the daring native rider who bested the Individuals. However in a world the place justice is offered to the best bidder, Buffalo Invoice and others be a part of the hunt for the bounty on Santino’s head. Rosa’s dream of freedom rapidly collides with the burden of actuality — and like in each good Western ballad, destiny flips a coin.”
The movie is impressed by a real occasion that came about throughout Buffalo Invoice’s keep in Italy. Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Alessandro Borghi, Peter Lanzani, Mirko Artuso, and Gianni Garko additionally star.
Administrators Rigo de Righi and Zoppis had been beforehand at Cannes in 2022 with “The Story of King Crab.” The duo advised IndieWire that “Heads or Tails?” is rooted of their shared “love for folks ballads and oral storytelling, narratives handed on as in the event that they had been truths.”
They mentioned in a shared assertion, “Like frontier legends, our story begins with acquainted Western parts, the cowboy, the duel, the escape, however slowly shifts right into a dreamlike, surreal story. The aim was to interrupt the principles of the style and reimagine it via a up to date Italian lens. The story of the butteri who challenged Buffalo Invoice’s cowboys impressed a story the place fiction and historical past intertwine. Divided into chapters like a dime novel, the movie is narrated by Buffalo Invoice himself, an unreliable voice whose model of occasions clashes with the fact of Rosa’s journey. Her arc turns into the emotional and symbolic core of the movie. At its coronary heart, ‘Heads or Tails?’ deconstructs the masculine delusion of the Western, revealing a world of phantasm, solitude, and brutality, the place love is the one path to redemption.”
In actual life, Buffalo Invoice introduced his fashionable “Buffalo Invoice’s Wild West Present” to Naples in 1890. The European tour included stops in Rome as nicely. Rigo de Righi defined within the press notes for the movie that discovering the precise casting for Buffalo Invoice was key. “One of the essential and delicate components of the casting course of was Buffalo Invoice. We had by no means labored with an American actor earlier than, and truthfully, it felt like one thing we might solely dream of,” Rigo de Righi mentioned. “We had been enormous followers of John C. Reilly, however we weren’t positive it might actually occur. Nonetheless, we despatched him the script — and never lengthy after, we obtained the prospect to satisfy him. And the second we sat down and talked, it was clear: how had we not considered him from the start? He was Buffalo Invoice. That assembly modified every little thing, it gave the character depth, irony, and humanity, precisely what we had been searching for.”
Reilly additionally advised Selection that the position was “intimidating” however an instantaneous honor. “Attending to interpret such a legendary character as William Cody was very intimidating, however such a pleasure as nicely,” Reilly mentioned. “He was fascinating and really a lot a person of contradictions. Matteo and Alessio are two of probably the most impressed and gifted administrators I’ve ever labored with, and it was in collaboration with them that I had the nerve to play this big in American historical past.”
Cinetic is dealing with U.S. gross sales for “Heads or Tails?” with RAI Cinema Worldwide procuring worldwide rights. The movie debuts at Cannes on Thursday, Might 22. Try an IndieWire unique clip within the video above.