After a successful collaboration with musician Arssalendo in 2022 for hybrid film Quattro Pareti which sits somewhere on the borderland between music video and short film, director Giada Bossi wanted to take their boundary blurring collaboration even further and dove into a visually stunning and emotionally raw exploration of youth, belonging and the wounds that shape us. To Call Home Always The Same Place (Chiamare casa sempre lo stesso posto) is a visual and sonic journey capturing the vibrant euphoria, simmering tensions, and profound introspection of adolescence. Shot in the Northern Italian region the Milan-based director calls home and fuelled by the collaborative inspiration and life-broaching conversations between herself and Arssalendo, Bossi has built a world simmering with authenticity. Split into a three-act narrative, each housing its own visual style and carefully crafted approach, To Call Home Always The Same Place reveals itself to the rhythm of Arssalendo’s music, transcending conventional categorisation whilst also telling a universally relatable story. As Bossi returns to our pages, we spoke about her process of integrating professional actors with local youth, shooting a mock-up of the film from rehearsals to fit each beat of the music and how returning to shoot in the place she once desperately wanted to leave became an act of reconciliation and artistic reclamation.
I know you have worked closely together in the past. How much influence did Arssalendo’s music have on this particular script?
When Alessandro played me Ma tu ci tieni a me?, the song you hear at the beginning from his previous EP, I immediately thought, OK – I have a story that is perfect for this song, a story that I wrote many years ago. The first idea was just to do the video clip for that song, with a narrative similar to Quattro Pareti. Then life, taxes, work… we had to postpone everything, promising each other to make it even better and bigger.
When we decided to structure the video in three acts, the Arssalendo songs weren’t there yet. We only had Ma tu ci tieni a me? but we had both just started writing other things and from there a parallel writing process began: I developed new parts of the video and Ale wrote other songs. For me, it was about understanding why what happened in the first chapter happened and how it could have ended differently. It was an open dialogue in which we were both involved in both projects, me in the album and him in the video. That dialogue was expanded on a daily basis and covered every topic, which, of course, influenced the project.
The first idea was to keep the whole first chapter of Ma tu ci tieni a me? and I was already well into the planning stage, so when Alessandro played me the new song Diventa grande poi passa, I had to process the change; the different tone and rhythm took the scene to another level. It wasn’t just drama, it was something else. I didn’t have to cut or change anything. In fact the arrangement was designed specifically for that sequence. For the released record, Arssalendo developed it differently.
Rather than deciding to mix short film and music video we followed a natural, almost inevitable process. The music is not an accompaniment, it’s the structure of the story.
The film exists in a fascinating liminal space between short film and music video. Could you talk about how you approached this deliberate hybridity and why you describe it as a ‘thing’?
From the beginning, we never felt the need to put this project in a certain format. The idea to make this video came at the same time as Arssalendo’s music, it would never have existed without it. So, rather than deciding to mix short film and music video, we followed a natural, almost inevitable process. The music is not an accompaniment, it’s the structure of the story. We didn’t construct a story and then look for a soundtrack, the two grew together, constantly influencing each other. That’s why defining it simply as a ‘thing’ seemed the most honest way to describe it, without necessarily having to give it an existing form.
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I come from the world of music videos, so it’s natural for me to think in terms of images that move with the music. One of my all-time favourite films – in my top ten since I was a teenager – is Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko which has moments where the narrative relies completely on the music, and I owe so much to that film – whose poster was also the reference for ours.
Was everything tightly scripted because the male toxic mocking, that unassuredness yet cockiness of youth and all of the desperate push and pulls that come with that age group feel so raw to me.
I wrote a proper script for this project but the first draft was already heavily influenced by the protagonists themselves. The monologue at the beginning and some of the IG content are remakes of real IG stories of teenagers from my neighbourhood in Northern Italy, where I was born and grew up and where the film was shot. I have shot a lot of projects there and involved a lot of kids, I know them and follow them on Insta and especially Marietto, one of the supporting actors. He gave me a lot of inspiration and he let me work around his words to create the script.
It was more important for me to create a situation, a mood, a contingency, a believable emotional context than to write every single word.
We started with my draft of the script but instead of imposing lines, I preferred to speak with each of them about the main theme that each scene should revolve around. It was more important for me to create a situation, a mood, a contingency, a believable emotional context than to write every single word, leaving them free to move and speak as they would in real life. They are all super smart and mature girls and boys, they were so involved in discussing how these moments felt, where a character was coming from, being aware of the gravity of some scenes and very much there to support each other. There was a big, spontaneous collective check on each other after every difficult scene which was really moving for me. I think it was that freedom and trust that brought out the raw energy, the contrasts and the insecurities that were masked by the bravado of that era.
The local town and the use of both experienced and non-professional actors are so essential to the grounding and authenticity of the film. Tell us about casting and bridging this group together.
The connection to the places where I grew up is fundamental to me. My writing always comes from the people I know, from the places that have shaped me so it was important that the cast reflected that rootedness. Many of the young people in the film are friends or at least familiar faces from the area, real people who bring their way of being, speaking and moving to the screen. For the main characters we looked for actors through agencies, looking all over Italy. I wanted there to be a balance between the naturalness of who they ‘are’ and the awareness of who they ‘play’. Stefano De Vivo, the protagonist in the role of Gio, came from an agency, his tape was PERFECT and it turned out that he lived next door to my parents. So he managed to fit in very well and he was already fully integrated. We used streetcasting to complete the whole process. It was a way of bringing something beautiful and heartfelt into these relationships and landscapes. To create a bridge between the people who live in these places and a story that respects and values them. And in the end, I think that’s what created the sense of truth that you get from the film.
Working with non-professional teenage actors presents unique challenges. What preparatory work did you undertake once you had the cast assembled?
Working with non-professional teenagers is always a wonderful and delicate challenge. We organised a three-day intensive workshop with Fabio Marchisio, an incredibly sensitive acting coach. We did readings and discussions beforehand and we also exchanged casting ideas. We decided what the programme could be and what the priorities were. Fabio then led the exercises, which meant I could take time to observe – and sometimes participate in the exercises with them. The first big step was to break the ice, but that happened very quickly and we jumped right in.
We made a mock-up version of the film just with the rehearsals to see and fix the fit with the music.
It wasn’t about teaching acting, it was about working on the deeper meaning of the situations. Through physical and relational exercises, we gradually brought them into character without forcing them, respecting their way of being. Working with them on their phobias or social anxieties helped us to go deeper into Fabio, which was essential to create a climate of trust, but also to give them concrete tools for staying focused, listening to each other and managing their energy. We also used these days as opportunities for discussion: daily meetings where we talked about the scenes, the emotions, what really resonated with us. I then continued to work with them on my own, fine-tuning specific scenes to my or their requirements, where we all felt extra work was needed. I filmed everything on a phone from day one to get them used to it and to watching it again, discussing it together and we made a mock-up version of the film just with the rehearsals to see and fix the fit with the music. That kind of preparation made everything run more smoothly on set. When we finally started shooting, there was no distance between them and the characters: they were really immersed in the emotions, and I think that’s what you see on the screen.
The three distinct chapters each adopt distinct styles. What was your approach to creating visual cohesion while maintaining these stylistic shifts and how did Francesca Pavoni’s cinematography help achieve this balance?
The idea for the chapters came about from the need to make them different from each other to match each different emotional beat and this needed to be reflected in the cinematography. Francesca and I worked a lot on the sense of emotional continuity, long discussions on what each chapter should convey before even thinking about how it should look. Francesca has a great ability to listen to the project, and without her sensitivity and eye, it would not have been possible to hold these three souls together.
Since the story of the first chapter comes from a mixture of personal experiences, we started thinking about our own youth, the colours it had, the contrasts, even the proportions. It felt like looking at old pictures, but we wanted to keep it real and consistent even in the present. The aim was to give the film a timeless feeling, not a vintage one. That’s why the film starts out super bright, vibrant, colourful, very pumped up – because that’s how teenage life is. But there’s something underneath that happiness. You’re experiencing life for the first time and things don’t always go perfectly. And that’s what we really wanted to capture, the grit and the roughness of that slice of life. As we continued with the story, we needed a break to emphasise this toughness, and that’s how the cold corner (as we called it) was born. The moment when the young girl leaves her friends and follows the guy around the corner is the moment when the cinematography deepens, gains contrast, hardness, even a bit of evil. It’s not all fairy tales anymore, things get real, no more chit-chat. This sudden change develops along the other two chapters, losing more and more of those vibrant colours and gaining depth in the blacks and truthfulness.
That’s what we really wanted to capture, the grit and the roughness of that slice of life.
I think this concept is also perfectly underlined by the use of camera movements. We start very softly, almost still, but as the story progresses, the camera gets more and more involved, hand-held, until in the last chapter it gets very shaky, matching the crescendo of emotions of both protagonists. These three different parts of the story also have a very distinct and different rhythm. The first part is very much like a rapid slideshow of images and memories, very accelerated, dynamic. And this pace increases until the car crash, when we have a suspension and time dilation that corresponds to the recognition of the protagonist’s own death. In the third chapter, while the time of the story comes to join the time of the narrative, it is pretty much the same time-space unit, and we needed a language that would make all the unspoken between them vivid and poignant. What holds the film together is the choice of lenses, which are both vintage but with a modern twist, and the colour palette, which softens along the way, except for the character of Stefano (in the role of Gio) because of his death, he’s somehow trapped in a different moment of his life, so he doesn’t evolve with the others.
Francesca, I particularly love the depth and texture of your darker shots. What lighting, equipment and camera did you use to capture everything?
Francesca Pavoni: The film was all shot with the same camera and lenses: an Alexa 35 and a set of Cooke S4i. I shoot most of my work on Arri cameras and I think the Alexa 35 responds really well in darker situations, plus we needed to shoot at 120fps, so it ticked all the boxes. As for the lenses, I wanted to get that mix of the images in my head of my teenage years and a more contemporary look. After some thought and testing, the S4i felt like the perfect choice: warm skin tones, medium contrast, control of flare (I hate flare – Giada does too) and distortion.
In terms of lighting, I like reality, I take my inspiration from everyday life so I wanted to create something real that everyone could see themselves in. The aim was to make the story as universal as possible. I worked with a mixture of natural light, tungsten and LED lights, balancing their colours according to their use. For example, in Chapter 1, in the night scene where the group of teenagers meet in the town square, I worked with tungsten lights coloured to resemble a sodium street light, but I also left some dark spots in the square because it felt more realistic to have light falling here and there. I then added some cold Astera tubes inside the white bar to separate it from the “orange/yellow” scene.
This scene needed colours, it needed warmth because it’s a moment of lightheartedness. And then you go to a very cold and almost clinical scene of the cold corner where I mixed an LED source from above with a cold white balance and some Astera tubes with a touch of cyan in it. If you look at this scene in particular, it feels almost bright compared to where you’re coming from, but it’s only bright in the little corner where the action is happening. Everything around you is dark, and it had to be dark to emphasise the struggle of the scene, the absence of the one who didn’t ‘protect’ you. Each light, even if there weren’t many, was thought out to have a specific purpose.
Another example is the dance performance in the water. We had to create an interior space that existed only in the girl’s mind – it had to be different from everything else in the film, detached from reality. That’s when we thought about involving Bianca Peruzzi, an amazing lighting designer with a lot of experience in live performances. We all worked together to match the lights to the dance, the bpm of the music and the emotions shown using two moving head lights from different angles. The result feels both staged and suspended in another place.
We couldn’t shoot the scene at dawn, but we did shoot it at dusk, so we ended up shooting the whole sequence back to front.
The most difficult part was the car crash. We imagined the guys driving around crazy after a night out, so the car would crash and the guys lying around would be alive at dawn. We couldn’t shoot the scene at dawn, but we did shoot it at dusk, so we ended up shooting the whole sequence back to front, dimming the lights and trying to follow the blue hour.
I want to know all about the shooting of that car scene, we can feel the tension and the intense energy changes so rapidly as they crash. How was this all captured and then edited?
Giada Bossi: We did a reshoot, although it wasn’t exactly planned. The days of shooting were hectic and the weather was very challenging, so we had to drastically reduce the amount of footage we shot. Most of the time it worked, but in this scene, as we were editing, we realised that we were missing some POV from the car to convey this frantic and raw energy of the characters, to stay with them in the car and leave them with this moment of omnipotence and adrenaline that is suddenly interrupted by disaster. So the image framing their interaction is from the main shot, all the intercut b-roll is from another brave night around. The sound merged it all together.
We moved, cut and rewrote the rhythm of some scenes until we found the shape that felt right.
Your editing is superb, seamlessly matching the pace of the music to the visual action. Was this all mapped out from the start or was post-production a lengthy discovery affair?
Glad you appreciated that! It was mostly gut feeling and tuning to the flow of the story. Some things were already planned in the writing and directing stages. We knew where we wanted certain visual beats to match the musical ones, but at the same time, we left room to find new solutions in post-production. In post, with co-editor Filippo Patelli, we moved, cut and rewrote the rhythm of some scenes until we found the shape that felt right. Arssalendo was patient enough to let us butcher his tracks and afterwards rework them properly in a way that made musical sense.
There’s something powerful about returning to film in the places of one’s adolescence. How has your relationship with Cunardo evolved through making work there and how does the film’s exploration of ‘home’ reflect your personal journey as a filmmaker?
I have to admit that as a teenager I hated that place, mainly because of the social dynamics we see in the film, which I found restrictive and oppressive. For me, Cunardo was a symbol of an identity that I wanted to shake off. But returning there to make films has become a process of reconciliation – both with the place and with the people who live there, whom I now see in a different light. It is no longer just the place I wanted to leave, but also the place I came from, which in a way gave me the emotional language with which I tell stories.
Over time, and with a few years of therapy (which always helps), I began to see these places and their memories as something that could be actively rewritten, rather than just endured. In this sense, the film is also a way of giving something back: telling the story of the complexity of home, not as a perfect refuge, but as an imperfect space where you clash, grow and sometimes return to better understand yourself and perhaps make it a more human environment.
What is coming next from you?
More narrative and more things!
