Ricardo Apilánez, a member of the FICX selection committee, talks to Giacomo Abbruzzese, the director of Disco Boy; and Anthony Lapia and Natalia Wiszniewska, the director and actress, artistic designer and creative producer of After. Both films have in common, in addition to being debut films, having premiered at the Berlin Film Festival; having French production (co-produced with Italy in the case of Disco Boy); and using electronic music in a decisive way in their narratives.

_{Giacomo Abbruzzese, Natalia Wiszniewska and Anthony Lapia}

Disco Boy took Giacomo Abbruzzese ten years to make, a long process that he defines as «tiring». For the director, the interest was in «bringing together war with techno music», with club culture. The filmmaker, who understands that «poetry lies in bringing together things that were not in contact before», decided to use a church as a set: «I didn’t want to treat the discotheque only as a place of entertainment, but as a place of transformation and ascension, as a sacred place».

_{Disco Boy by Giacomo Abbruzzese}

The director Anthony Lapia and the actress, artistic designer and creative producer of After, Natalia Wiszniewska, a couple, not only professionally, but also in real life, intended the film to show «what really happens in a nightclub at night (…) by putting the camera in there and showing everything that happens», as Lapia points out. To do this, they filmed seven nights of real parties with techno music. Wiszniewska adds that it is also «the portrait of a parallel world (…), that outlet where anything can happen and people are liberated».

_{After by Anthony Lapia}

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