The world premiere of In The Fire is to be held at the 69th Taormina Film Festival for the world premiere of In The Fire. The film's director Conor Allyn and co-stars Eduardo Noriego and Amber H. will be in Sicily for the premiere, which is set for June 24 at the Teatro Antico di Taorina. The fest takes place June 23-July 1, 2023 in Sicily.
In the Fire is described as a supernatural thriller that stars Heard as a pioneering psychiatrist who sets out to treat a desperate child at a time when psychiatry is not yet a respected science. Set in 1899, the film follows a 38-year-old American psychiatrist as she arrives on a rich farm in Colombia after being called to solve the case of a disturbed child following increasingly insistent accusations that the child is the devil. While the woman tries to psychoanalyze the child, the nefarious events intensify and her “cure” becomes a race to save the little boy from the fury of his fellow citizens, and perhaps, even from himself.
Previous works from Allyn include the IFC Films western No Man’s Land starring Frank Grillo, George Lopez and Andie Macdowell. Allyn also previously directed Netflix Originals Walk. Ride. Rodeo, and he was executive producer on I’m No Longer Here.
The festival’s newly appointed Executive and Co-Artistic Director, Barrett Wissman, announced the lineup for the 69th Taormina Film Festival earlier this month, with additional screenings and events to be added. The festival is one of the most prestigious film festivals in Europe and Italy, and its past premieres include La Dolce Vita, The Godfather, Braveheart, Mission Impossible, Inglourious Basterds and many, many more.
When Conor Allyn shot Into the Fire with Amber Heard as the film’s lead in February 2022, it was months before the actor’s defamation trial with ex-husband Johnny Depp. But now, a year on from that legal battle, the film is launching Heard back into the film industry as it world premiered at the Taormina Film Festival on Saturday evening.
Allyn and Italian actor Luca Calvani, who stars as Father Antonio in the supernatural thriller, stepped into Deadline’s studio at the festival to talk about working with Heard and the project’s messages of breaking down the barriers of mental health and human connection.
“I’m so happy that Amber went through something so awful and it didn’t change her as a person,” Allyn told Deadline. “She’s still the shining light that we explained earlier and to go through something that terrible and be able to come out the other side and be whole, well I can’t imagine it.”
Calvani was effusive about his experience working with Heard, stating the actor was “generous and encouraging” on set. “She’s a star and she has that light,” he said. “She glows and she pulls you in and she shares it with everybody. The last person on set will feel it and feel a connection with her.”
He added: “Anyone that suffers that sort of ordeal and is able to overcome it with grace, no matter what side you’re on, no matter what you believe or which social media [outlet] you plug into or whatever your hashtags are, you have to give credit for the incredible journey this woman has been through and she can teach us all a couple of things as far as resilience and courage.”
The film, which also stars Eduardo Noriega and Lorenzo McGovern Zaini, sees Heard play an American psychiatrist who travels to a remote plantation in Colombia in the 1890s to treat a disturbed boy. There, she finds herself in a war of science versus religion with the local priest (played by Yari Gugliucci) who believes the child is possessed by the devil.
“This is a movie about people who aren’t talking to each other,” said Allyn. “People who are walled off from one another because of various flaws, fears and biases. We use psychiatry, or the study of psychology, in the film to basically break down those barriers a bit and look past them and find some human connection. The 1890s was right at the genesis of that science and it wasn’t a respected science at all at that time. Still, obviously mental health is something we’re talking about on a daily basis, and we still don’t understand it.”
The duo noted that while the film is set in a different time, there are many relevant themes that will align with modern day society, notably issues of increased polarization of beliefs and the lack of acceptance of new ideas.
“We tend to speak in absolutes now,” said Allyn. “Whatever side you’re on, we don’t reach across lines, we don’t communicate with any significance across tribal lines, and we should. I think that’s what I love about cinema, is that we all sort of sit in the dark and will watch the same movie and we’re doing it together.”
Calvani added, “We talked about absolutes and humanity, by definition, is just the opposite of that. And so, when the audience gets put into this space, where some of the characters display various aspects all over the spectrum of these absolutes and they are forced to question themselves, which is really rooted in our humanness in a way. And so, it starts the conversation and then walls crumble and connection happens.”
The 69th Taormina Film Festival in Sicily saw the world premiere Saturday of the paranormal psychological thriller “In the Fire,” which marks the return to the big screen of Amber Heard following two highly publicized trials involving her former husband Johnny Depp.
On the turquoise carpet (the color was chosen to match the Mediterranean, which serves as a stupendous backdrop), Heard greeted a crowd of fans — accompanied by paparazzi and tourists — who shouted words of encouragement at the “Aquaman” star.
The producers and festival organizers had worried about possible demonstrations by Depp supporters. Producer Pascal Borno told Variety he had to persuade the Italian police to provide extra security after receiving online threats. “They took it seriously and afterwards I promised them selfies with Amber,” he said.
Despite the initial trepidation, the atmosphere of the crowd was one of the usual celebrity-adjacent excitement. One family visiting from New York remarked to Variety that they thought Heard was “gutsy.”
“I was relieved to see how they shouted for her. After all the stuff being yelled online at this beautiful human being,” said Heard’s co-star, Italian actor Luca Calvani (“The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”).
The film’s production had been bracketed by the first trial in London in 2020, which denied Depp’s suit of defamation, and the second in Virginia in 2022, which Heard left the shoot in Guatemala to attend. (The film also shot on location in Ostuni, Italy). “The trial was looming over us. We felt the gravity of this huge media machine building against all of us, and the camaraderie of the shoot felt like a good distraction,” Calvani said.
Heard responded to some questions from Variety in writing, although the subject of Depp was off limits. “I feel honored to be part of this labor of love and to be the lead in [director] Conor Allyn’s vision,” she wrote. “I feel lucky to be surrounded by such an amazing cast. They’re as dedicated and magical as the characters they play.”
Heard described the film as “a meditation on the almost supernatural powers of love told through a strong-willed and independent woman at the turn of the 20th century.”
Heard plays Grace, an outsider from New York who travels to South America to work as a doctor. There, she faces hostility, partly from the volcanic landscape as well as the fact that she is a woman practicing psychiatry at the birth of the science, only a few years after Sigmund Freud published his first books.
She is called to a remote farm in the Colombian countryside to treat a young boy (Lorenzo McGovern), who the locals — led by a charismatic Jesuit priest (Yari Gugliucci) — believe to be possessed by the devil. His father, played by Eduardo Noriega, first treats Grace with contempt before being won over.
Allyn told Variety he met Heard while developing a serial killer TV drama set in Colombia a few years earlier. When that project stalled in 2022, Heard read the script for “In the Fire” and agreed to work on what Allyn describes as a “a gothic Gaucho western” after she had finished her “Aquaman 2” commitment.
“When Amber showed up in Italy to shoot, she was a force to be reckoned with. She was a star who was amazing in front of the camera, but also was a partner in crime behind the camera,” Allyn said. “Once we started shooting, it was from Day One a comfort blanket to have her there. I knew I could point the camera at her, and I would get something good.”
Whether or not the film will move the narrative on from Heard’s legal affairs is yet to be seen, but Allyn hopes for a “mega-comeback.” Calvani agreed enthusiastically: “Amber is back. She’s great; she is radiant; she’s a good actor and she is resilient.”
“In the Fire” was produced by Angel Oak Films, ILBE and Paradox.
I meet Amber Heard in the café of a hotel in Sicily and when she reaches to shake hands, the ice breaker becomes the tan orthopedic brace cradling that wrist.
“I wish I had a better story, but I was swatting a fly — though in my opinion it was a mosquito which makes it extra annoying — and I missed, and tripped over my daughter’s little stepping stool, and caught myself with my wrist,” she said. “I have tendinitis in the same wrist, and while my usual sound medical approach is to ignore it and hope it goes away, that wasn’t an option because it would just linger.”
She was in Sicily for the Taormina Film Festival for the World Premiere of In The Fire, a Conor Allyn-directed drama about a collision between science and religion in a tug of war over a troubled but gifted youth marked for death by a zealous priest who calls the shots in a small town in Colombia in 1890. Heard is exceptional playing an American psychiatrist the boy’s father calls in to work with his son, a youth who was blamed by his father, that town priest and the townsfolk for the death of boy’s mother. They believe he is evil and the cause of all the town’s misfortune. They have no regard for a stranger, especially a woman and a woman of science, at a time when religious fervor ruled and psychiatry was barely regarded as more than a magic trick. Allyn wrote the script with Pascal Borno and Silvio Muraglia.
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In the Fire | supernatural thriller directed by Conor Allyn
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