The city of Lucca hosted the prestigious set for several weeks starting in March
Eight years after his last picture, Peter Greenaway returned to directing with Tower Stories, a project entirely set in Lucca, produced by the American company Facing-East, with the Italian executive producer The Family by Ada Bonvini.
The British director has wished to shoot a movie in the Tuscan city since 2013, when he was a guest at the Lucca Film Festival and he presented the multimedia work The towers / Lucca Hubris.
Preparation for Towers Stories had already begun in 2023 with the collaboration of the Municipality of Lucca. The film presents an international cast that includes Oscar-winning actors Dustin Hoffman and Helen Hunt.
Location
Filming began on March 25 and continued until early May. The last phase of shootings was carried out between the end of June and the beginning of July. The set involved the most iconic places of the city such as the ancient Walls, the Guinigi Tower, Piazza San Michele, Piazza San Frediano, Via Beccheria, Piazza Antelminelli, Via del Battistero, Piazza Anfiteatro, Piazza del Duomo, the Sartoria Ricci Atelier and historical buildings of great charm such as Palazzo Giustiniani and Palazzo Pfanner.
Synopsis
“With ironic provocation, the film is poised to seriously question whether death is necessary and, if it were, shouldn’t we be the ones who decide where, when, and how? If we are really going to die, shouldn’t we be involved in the decision-making process?” These are the questions that Peter Greenaway poses with his new film.
The script, written by Greenaway himself, tells the story of “an intelligent man whose last great adventure is doomed to kill him. He wants it to be elegant, sensible, and orderly, with as few loose ends as possible.” A theme, as Greenaway has declared, “extremely relevant and current in these times, in which the topic of the end of life is on newspapers’ front pages every day”.
