About
A Holocaust survivor running a daycare business forms an unlikely friendship with a bitter street kid when she takes him in after he robs her.
Starring: Sophia Loren, Ibrahima Gueye, Renato Carpentieri
Director and co-writer: Edoardo Ponti
At the Deadline Contender's Event Loren and her son Ponti said in an interview:
"Ever since I was a teenager I loved Romain Gary’s novel; I found the story of friendship and love between Madame Rosa and 12-year-old Momo two persons that everything separates – race, religion, culture – and yet they are people who are both sides of the same coin." - Edoardo Ponti
“Ever since I was a teenager I loved Romain Gary’s novel; I found the story of friendship and love between Madame Rosa and 12-year-old Momo two persons that everything separates – race, religion, culture – and yet they are people who are both sides of the same coin. They have been raised without family and have been defined by suffering, but more importantly by hope and resilience and that really touched me.” - Edoardo Ponti
“I love working with my mother who happens to be an amazing actress. And what I love most of all is to present her in a way that I see her,” Ponti says. “To be able to present her to the world through my eyes, to give people the most authentic complete version of Sophia, and not the Sophia, the icon who spells her name with a ‘ph,’ but rather the Sofia, the mother, the woman, the actress, the artist who spells her name with an ‘f’.”
As for Loren, the role as Madame Rosa — a dying woman who takes care of the kids of women with whom she once walked the streets of the Italian town of Bari — it was irresistible to lure her back to the screen.
"I thought it was something very close to my way with feelings and emotions. This is what really touched me about Madame Rosa. She was full of life but at the same time she had problems with the world and everything else." - Sophia Loren
"I thought it was something very close to my way with feelings and emotions. This is what really touched me about Madame Rosa. She was full of life but at the same time she had problems with the world and everything else. She was always surrounded by very young children and she always looked like she was maybe not so keen about them. But If she hadn’t had them around her she would have died much sooner than she did.”