Elio, the band’s frontman Elio and the Tense Storiesis ready to make the big leap behind the camera. Filming of the film will begin in November 2026 The Crackan acid and realistic cinematic comedy focused on the world of autism. Co-written by the director himself together with Piero Bodrato, the project was born from a deep and personal bond, fueled by the experience lived with his son Dante and by the long years of activism and awareness-raising carried out in Italy.
The ambitious objective is not to create a documentary work or yet another pietistic narrative, but rather a real cinema capable of conveying the daily complexity, made up of immense hardship but also of an overwhelming and contagious joy of living. The production is entrusted to Tempest in collaboration with Rai Cinema and in co-production with Cinédokké, while the national distribution in Italian cinemas will be handled by 01 Distribution.
The partnership with Nico Acampora and the cast made up of the PizzAut guys
The beating heart of the operation lies in the synergy with Nico Acampora and his famous job placement experience started in the PizzAut restaurants in Cassina de’ Pecchi and Monza. More than half of the artistic cast will be made up directly of autistic kids who work every day as waiters, bartenders and pizza chefs in the project locations, supported by Nico Acampora himself as an interpreter. There will be faces known to the public such as Lorenzo, Christian, Letizia, Matteone and Balù, covering different levels of the autistic spectrum to demonstrate that art has no limits and that barriers can be shattered.
Producers Carlo Cresto-Dina and Manuela Melissano strongly wanted a radically inclusive approach, reiterating that it is now unacceptable to entrust roles of neurodivergent people to fake neurotypical actors. The intention declared from the very beginning is not to make a film on PizzAut, but to make it with them, giving the young participants an immense artistic and human dignity that aims to rewrite the rules of the contemporary audiovisual industry.
A stellar cast and the overcoming of old narrative clichés
Supporting the boys on set will be a team of top-class professional actors, including Pietro Sermonti, Geppi Cucciari, Cochi Ponzoni, Paolo Rossi, Margherita Vicario, Galatea Bellugi and Donatella Finocchiaro, as well as Elio himself. The film will carefully avoid easy rhetoric and tears of circumstance, choosing to tell reality with sharp irony and a gaze free of hypocritical filters. The roles linked to neurodivergence will not undergo any interpretative alteration by third parties, enhancing the raw authenticity of the protagonists.
With 01 Distribution ready to bring the film to all theaters, the project is set to become a cultural turning point for the Italian cinema scene. Enthusiasm is sky high and, as Nico Acampora reminds us, this adventure concretely demonstrates that there are new horizons to conquer and not just boundaries to passively accept, paving the way for a totally new way of performing and social inclusion.
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