Vittoria Rizzaldi Penalosa on Being a Young, Upcoming Filmmaker

Vittoria, 24, is a film director, screenwriter and actress based in Los Angeles, California. Born in northern Italy but with Colombian heritage, she has had an unusual journey to success. After going through several hardships for the past 10 years, I, Mattia, felt that her story was worth sharing, to show what courage and hard work can lead to. In the following lines, Vittoria and I discuss her story, her newfound love for the arts, and the challenges of working in the movie industry as a young female.

M: I know that you have had a quite challenging and unusual path to get to where you are now. Can you briefly walk our readers through your journey?

V: To me this is a journey that never really never stops being challenging, and I feel like I still have a long way to go to get where I want to be. However, I do think that, up until now, the hardest part was gaining confidence in my talent and skills and to decide that those, along with my passion, were enough for me to pursue my dream of working in film and television. I’m not one of those artists that will tell you that at the age of 5 year old they were already walking around with a camera making shorts. It took me a while to understand what I was good at and what I wanted my life to look like. When I graduated from high school I decided to enrol myself in Law school in London. Two weeks in I had to face the fact that it was simply not for me. I, nevertheless, wanted to finish it, purely for my own sense of personal achievement. But I immediately started writing, short stories which then quickly translated into scripts. I started making my first short films which went around festivals in Europe and that’s when I started to think “I can really do this”. Nothing made me feel what I feel when I was on set… that’s when you know you must pursue it. Once I completed my law degree I immediately applied for a MA in Fine Arts In Screenwriting At The University of Southern California and I ended up being one of the 30 candidates that stood out. Living in LA was intimidating at first, but it got better and better the more I started to feel I deserved to be there. The biggest challenge was to decide to do this and stop letting my insecurities get the best of me. Since then, I’ve made more films which screened at more renowned film festivals, such as the London Independent Film Festival, the New York City International Film Festival, the HBO Latino Film and Arts Festivals, and Cannes Film Festival this past May, just after my Master’s graduation.

M: Can you tell us what your job consists of and talk to us a bit about what you're working on right now?

V: I’m currently working as a screenwriter and director. I’ve signed with my management team last year and we’re working on the TV show I recently finished writing and developing. Meanwhile, I directed a couple music videos and commercials and I’m finishing up the last draft of a short film I plan to direct this coming April. 

M: What are your main sources of inspiration, both visually and story-wise?

V: My main sources of inspiration are writers and directors Alice Rohrwacher, Andrea Arnold, and Pedro Almodovar. I’m obsessed Alice’s poetic visuals, usually shot on film. They always make me feel like I’m in a dream, her dream. Im deeply amused by Andrea’s uneven and unstructured narrative, since she doesn’t follow a standard three-acts structure, but rather follows the characters’ journey. Her bold story-telling is what I aspire to achieve one day. Lastly, I’m in love with each of Pedro’s characters, because to me they’re heightened as well as incredibly grounded. They’re real in a way that touches your soul, but pushed to the extreme in a way that makes you laugh and cry at the same time. I believe all my work is somewhat inspired by them.

M: Seen as the Oscars just took place, I wanted to hear a bit about how you feel regarding the fact that in 90 years of Oscar history, only five female directors have ever been nominated for an Oscar for best director.

V: I think we’re currently living at complicated times. For example, actress keep saying how, few years back, the roles available to them were the ones of the wife, or the hot girl, or the caregiver. And while that is true, to an extent, it also discredits some iconic female characters in the history of cinema such as in “The Gentlemen Prefer The Blondes” or “All About Eve”. Therefore, in my opinion, this drastic stance being taken by many in Hollywood is quite extreme, and I wonder if it’s truly beneficial for women in the industry. Lulu Wang, writer and director of “The Farewell” won best picture at the Spirits Awards the day before the Oscars. In her speech she talked about how the point isn’t to empower or motivate female filmmakers anymore, because they don’t need it, they are out there and ready. So, invest. Invest and believe in them. With this, I’m clearly 100% on board with. So much so I almost got emotional listening to Lulu’ speech. However, I also think that nominations should come when they are fully and equally deserved. As much as I absolutely loved Lorene Scafaria’s “Hustlers” or Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women”, I did think that, considering the limited number of nominations you can have in each category, the nominations for the 2020 Oscars Best Director were fair. As my favourite director, Andrea Arnold, said once in an interview, “I’d hate my film to be chosen because I was a woman.” Ultimately, I believe the system is changed by investing and believing in female filmmakers at the very beginning of a project. Once a film is fully financed and produced, you can only rely on the movie you’ve made and nothing else.

M: Lastly, Can you introduce your work “Fairweather” that our readers can find below?

V: Fairweather is one of my first short films. I decided to include one of my early works as it’s the most unpolluted one. Now, I have to follow a certain structure and story-line, while, at the very beginning of my career, I wasn’t thinking about any of this and, therefore, I find my early works to be the ones that represent me the most. Fairweather, follows the journey of a woman's soul who keeps finding herself in bodies belonging to people from different social classes. I was trying to explore the lack of empathy in society nowadays. What would you do if you found yourself in the body of the person who was asking for help when you turned the other way?

'Fairweather' follows the journey of a woman's soul who keeps finding herself in bodies belonging to people from different social classes, exploring the lack of empathy in society nowadays.

Interview by Mattia Zancanari
Material provided by Vittoria Rizzaldi Penalosa