Heads or Tails? (Drama)

Rating:

Director: Alessio Rigo de Righi,Matteo Zoppis
Producer: Alex C. Lo,Tommaso Bertani,Paolo Del Brocco
Screenwriter: Carlo Salsa,Matteo Zoppis,Alessio Rigo de Righi
Cinematographer: Simone d’Arcangelo
Composer: Vittorio Giampietro
Editor: Andrés Pepe Estrada,Jacopo Ramella Pajrin
Key Cast: Gianni Garko,Nadia Tereszkiewicz,John C. Reilly,Gabrielle Silli,Alessandro Borghi,Mirko Artuso,Peter Lanzani

Looking like he was born to play the role, John C. Reilly is Buffalo Bill in this spectacularly beautiful Italian western that exposes the lies behind – and lines between – myth and history.

In the late 19th century, ‘Buffalo’ Bill Cody is touring Italy with his theatrical show, amplifying and glorifying his legend as an American frontiersman. His bluster comes undone, however, during a display of skill between his travelling cowboys and the Italian butteri – one of whom is Santino, a would-be revolutionary hero who takes flight with Rosa, a young woman seeking to escape an oppressive marriage. As Buffalo Bill joins the hunt for the young lovers, he narrates a version of events that doesn’t exactly adhere to the truth; and as Santino indulges his growing infamy, Rosa learns that controlling her story in a man’s world may just come down to a flip of a coin.

Having previously explored the slipperiness of storytelling in The Tale of King Crab (MIFF 2022), Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis craft a sumptuous western that both lovingly adheres to and surrealistically subverts the touchpoints of the genre. John C. Reilly (Stars at Noon, MIFF 2022) is a gift as Buffalo Bill, while Alessandro Borghi and Nadia Tereszkiewicz are magnetic as Santino and Rosa. Shot on 35mm, 16mm and super-16mm, Heads or Tails? is a witty interrogation of how the lies we tell ourselves can take on lives of their own.

“Delightfully madcap … an enjoyably off-kilter Euro-western that honors the stylistic and structural traditions of the genre while occupying its own reality entirely.” – Variety