• Pallaoro is competing at the 71st SEMINCI with his fourth feature film, in which he takes on the challenge of bringing to the screen the last screenplay co-written by the great Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci.
• The film, starring Luca Marinelli, Alicia Vikander, and Susan Sarandon, is an intense, intimate drama about desire, dependence, and intimacy.

Italian director Andrea Pallaoro is competing in the Official Section of the 71st SEMINCI with his fourth feature film, The Echo Chamber, which brings to life Bernardo Bertolucci’s final screenplay, written alongside Ilaria Bernardini and Ludovica Rampoldi before his death in 2018. Regarding the challenge of taking on the directing role, Pallaoro commented: “I didn’t accept the screenplay as soon as it was offered to me; it took me a while to figure out if this was a story I should tell. I knew I had to be as sincere as possible, and that meant bringing my own sensibility and vision to Bertolucci’s screenplay. I didn’t want to recreate or reproduce the story exactly as he would have done. For me, that would have been a betrayal of the very authenticity I wanted to protect.”

A Trio of Titans

The legacy of Bertolucci—creator of such canonical works as Novecento, The Conformist, and The Dreamers—lives on in this intimate drama about desire, passion, and the power dynamics in romantic relationships. These complex themes are brilliantly reflected in the performances of the trio consisting of Luca Marinelli, Alicia Vikander, and Susan Sarandon. Pallaoro’s filmmaking has always been driven by intense work with actors and actresses—a hallmark that led to his collaboration with these three stars from different generations.

Sarandon, star of films such as Thelma & Louise and Little Women and recipient of the Goya International Award in 2026, was a clear choice for Pallaoro from the very beginning. “I grew up watching Susan act, and I remember being mesmerized by her presence, the power of her eyes, her gaze, and her intensity. When I read the script, I immediately thought of her, but I never imagined that when I wrote to her, she would say yes and bring with her all her generosity, courage, and vulnerability. Working with her has been the greatest honor of my life,” the filmmaker shared.

An Emotional Microcosm

Marinelli plays a music producer caught between two women: a veteran singer (Sarandon) and her caregiver (Vikander). This love triangle unfolds entirely within a luxurious London apartment—a unique space that expands emotionally through the characters. “Everything happens in that apartment, from start to finish. It’s a place with great emotional weight and also a refuge. It’s a repository of memories and, at the same time, a place of surveillance and control,” Pallaoro noted. He added: “One of the things that excited me most about the script was how this apartment was used as a means of communication between the characters. Their dialogue is manifested in the architecture and the objects they find there: the coffee cup, the pillow, the scarf… All of this represented a great cinematic opportunity for me.”

The director described the story as one of desire and longing, absence and presence, control and intimacy. All of this is told through a structure that plays with different timelines, just as it was in the original screenplay. “That structure is part of the exploration of memory and desire that Bernardo, Ilaria, and Ludovica captured in the screenplay. The idea of an echo also emerges from that interweaving of time frames. The structure and the dynamics of the characters are the essence of the film; I knew I had to keep them exactly as they were,” he concluded.