The story of Maria José of Savoy, who served as Queen of Italy for just 27 days after World War II until the Italian people voted to abolish the monarchy, will be the subject of a new historical drama. The film, titled “Maestà” (“Majesty”), will be directed by Ginevra Elkann (“If Only”), who will also co-write the screenplay and is based on an idea by esteemed Italian author Marco Bellocchio.
Maria José, daughter of King Albert I of Belgium, married Prince Umberto II of Italy, whose father, Vittorio Emanuele III, collaborated with the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. She became known as the “May Queen” because she and her husband reigned for just 27 days, from May 9, 1946, when Victor Emmanuel III abdicated to his son in the hope of preserving the House of Savoy’s throne in the turmoil that followed Mussolini’s fall, to June 2, when the Italian people voted to abolish the monarchy and the House of Savoy went into exile.
María José, a rebellious royal and secretly known as an anti-fascist, then moved to Portugal and soon separated from her husband. The film will offer Italians an opportunity to reconsider their fascist past through the unique lens of a non-Italian woman chosen by fate to be the country’s final queen for a short period of time.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about María José, ‘Make In,’ the majesty that she certainly dreamed of since she was a child,” Verrocchio said in a statement. “The dignity that she had been destined for by her parents, the king and queen, the highly democratic Belgian royal family. This fairy tale was dramatically shattered by her marriage to Prince Umberto. The brutality of fascism, the racist laws, the brutality of war. Until that May, she had no dreams, and perhaps she still had fantasies.”
Bellocchio, whose recent credits include the mafia drama “Traitor” (released in the US by Sony) and the HBO TV series “Portobello,” will co-write the screenplay for “Maesta” with Elkann and his girlfriend regular Chiara Barzini. “Maestà” is a Kavac Film project produced by Simone Gattoni.
The granddaughter of former Fiat carmaker boss Gianni Agnelli, Elkann graduated from the London Film School and worked as an assistant to Bernardo Bertolucci and Anthony Minghella. She made her directorial debut with “Magari” (“If Only”), a semi-autobiographical comedy about the disconnection felt by children of divorced parents, which opened the 2019 Locarno Film Festival. Following that, he released the black comedy “I Told You So” in Toronto in 2023. Her upcoming third film, Leila, is set in Marrakech’s famous Agnelli mansion, known as Ain Qassimou, and stars Fanny. Enthusiastic.
In his director’s statement, Elkann (pictured above, right) described María José of Savoy as “an intelligent and cultured woman who was born ready to rule” and stressed that “she was indeed a queen, but only for a few weeks.”
The film will tell the story of May 1946, “interrupted between her accession to the throne and the referendum that ended the monarchy,” she said.
“Everything is focused on those few weeks: her hopes and doubts,” Elkann continued. “There was a daily rift between the desire to be queen and the realization that the conditions for becoming queen no longer existed.”
“Her tragedy is not defeat, but her (growing) consciousness: the realization that she was born for something that will never happen. Telling María José’s story means showing the end of the world through the face of one human being, without nostalgia or condemnation, with homage to her intelligence.”
Barzini commented, “How can you not dramatically love characters who stand on the threshold of irreversible historical change? I am interested in women and men who witness the end of the world, who recognize the cracks and decay of the world but remain emotionally connected to it. María José belongs to this category of suspended figures.”
“Modern, cultured, anti-fascist and politically astute, she understands that it is an anachronism to continue clinging to the illusion of monarchy after the catastrophe of war. Yet she remains the young Belgian princess who has dreamed of Italy since childhood. In this sense, This film not only tells the story of the end of the Italian monarchy, but also the universal difficulty of separating ourselves from the image of our destiny that we have created.”It would be very interesting to explore this inner turmoil through her daily life, gestures and thoughts during her few weeks as Queen. ”
Kavac Film is a Rome-based production company founded in 1997 by Bellocchio and Francesca Calvelli and led by CEO Simone Gattoni. Their recent projects include Verrocchio’s Portobello series for HBO Max, Gianni Amelio’s new film No Pain, Verrocchio’s upcoming film The Falcon, about the late auto executive Sergio Marchionne, and Giuseppe Tornatore’s The First Dollar, a biopic of Bank of America founder Amedeo Peter Giannini.
