BAD TONGUES

• BAD TONGUES •A film by Giulia Caruso

~Feature narrative

Second draft of the script

Estimated running time: 90’Estimated shooting dates: Summer 2015

Country of production: ItalyCo-production: USA

Language: Italian with English subtitles

Screenwriter: Giulia Caruso / Ki Jin KimDirector: Giulia Caruso

Producer: Ki Jin KimCo-producer: Gorav Kalyan

Italy, August 15th. In a fishing town soaked in superstition and Catholic guilt, news of an imminent apocalyptic event spreads

across the town and spirals out of control. As the town gets ready to celebrate the pagan and religious festivity of Ferragosto, the protagonists each struggle to avoid their own personal apocalypse. Matteo, the teenager, must stop the love of his life from losing her virginity to the local lothario lifeguard. Diego, candidate for mayor, tries to involve in his schemes Don Fausto, the priest - already under investigation for poaching wild boars and busy hiding his even darker secrets. Virginia, a rich, once beautiful Milanese, struggles against the provincial rumors of her supposed affair with Abu, the Tunisian baker.

Love is sex is politics is religion. As the summer heat mixes the sweat and the holy water, reality and superstition, Gossip

becomes the force that ultimately brings the town together on the day that the world is supposed to end.

An end-of-the-world satire about gossip

~

Bad Tongues happens in a world where the truth is what is said, not

what is done.

All the main stories of the movie are based on the premise that

words matter more than actions. Teenage love is all about talking: who likes who, who did what. In politics, promises count more than facts. Religion is created with words, not based on events. When fear of the different turns into provincialism and racism, preconceptions overpower actions in the judgment of others.

All the characters move in a circle, using gossip or trying to avoid it,

just to end up where they started. A lot was said, little changed.

It’s a society stuck in stasis, in the inability to go beyond personal

interests, in the attitude that things are not real until they are revealed to the public. The enclosed gossipy Town becomes a condensed metaphor and satire of contemporary Italy, as well as many other countries. At the same time, Bad Tongues aims to expand beyond the closed microcosm and reflect on universal dynamics of power, the growing disconnect

between the game of politics and the people, as well as on our over-connected lives. Overwhelmed by news and images we seem to have lost the sense of what is true, and if something is not photographed or talked about, it doesn’t exist.

Bad Tongues is a modern Greek drama about gossip. The seagulls’

call echoes over the motionless summer sea. A prophecy hangs on the heroes’ heads, reminding them of their humanity and their limits. The movie respects the traditional unity of time & space and uses the Chorus as the incarnation of public opinion, following the structure of ancient Greek drama. There, most of the events happen off-screen and are reported on stage by a messenger - the perfect structure for a movie about gossip.

Bad Tongues comes from childhood memories when ancient myths

were my grandma’s bed stories, my classical studies and the need for politics not so scarily similar to a tabloid or a football championship – where all that matters is scoring. All the questions posed by the ancient tragedies are still asked.

If the world were to end today,what would you talk about?

• GIULIA CARUSO •writer/director

~Born in Milan, Italy, in 1985, Giulia studied Classics at the University of Bologna before her passion for filmmaking took her to Buenos Aires, New York City and finally Los Angeles.

Giulia holds an MFA in Film Directing from California Institute of the Arts, for which she was awarded the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Scholarship.

She is currently finishing post-production on her first feature, Aurora notte, and sending it out to festivals. Her last short, Proximities, was produced by James Franco as part of the Holyland feature, to be released in 2014.

Giulia collaborates with the independent production company Nonetheless Productions as director and producer. She is currently co-producing the narrative feature Spa Night, dir. Andrew Ahn (Sundance Screenwriting Lab & Producing Summit 2013) and the doc-hybrid Preserves, dir. Norbert Shieh (Creative Capital 2012/CNEX CCDF 2013).

In 2013, Giulia was selected for the Berlinale Talent Campus as writer/director.