Football Italia attended the premiere of Black and White Stripes: The Juventus Story in London on Tuesday – and we caught an exclusive insight into the making of the film.
Directed by Bianconeri-supporting brothers Marco and Mauro La Villa, The Juventus Story vividly recounts how the Agnelli family’s ownership of the club survived the test of time.
Football Italia attended the premiere of Black and White Stripes: The Juventus Story in London on Tuesday – and we caught an exclusive insight into the making of the film.
Directed by Bianconeri-supporting brothers Marco and Mauro La Villa, The Juventus Story vividly recounts how the Agnelli family’s ownership of the club survived the test of time.
Here’s what Marco told our very own Livio Caferoglu after the screening…
Football Italia: How did the film come about?
Marco La Villa: “We’re filmmakers, we’re not sports journalists or anything. Our first documentary was on DJs in 1998, and then we wrote fiction screenplays for [several] years. We also had a second passion besides cinema, which was Juventus. That passion had been given to us by our dad. His biggest regret in life was never having seen Juventus live in the stadium, [even though] he was born and raised near Caserta, in Italy.
“He wanted to, but he didn’t get the chance. We almost had a chance to take him, but it didn’t happen, he passed away and that was our biggest regret. One of the biggest reasons [for making a film] was that it was a passion film dedicated to our dad and Juventus. It worked very well for us. In 2006, we started doing a lot more research, [studying] at least 15,000 articles, developing the idea, bringing the package together and putting a demo together.
“In 2008, we started to show some people and got it a little more developed. In 2009, we met (Agnelli family heir) Lapo Elkann and pitched to him in New York, where we live. He said he really liked the idea and, within 10 minutes, put us on the phone to the President of Juventus, Jean-Claude Blanc, and Jean-Claude said ‘come to Turin.’
“We went to Turin four months later, and then it took two years to sign the contract after that! Jean-Claude was no longer President, Andrea Agnelli had taken over, so we had to re-pitch the project, and with John Elkann, Lapo and Andrea on board, we finally got the full green and started shooting in 2010.
“We kept working until 2016, when the film finally came out. The Italian version was the first version out and we premiered it at the Juventus Stadium, and then it went to No 1 in the box office in Italy for three straight days.
“It was surreal because it was also published online, we didn’t know until the next morning. We scrolled down to the bottom of the list because there were 125 films, Pixar Films, Universal Studios…
“We scrolled all the way back to the top and there it was, three days in a row!”
Marco and Mauro La Villa flank Hollywood actor and Juventus fan Mark Strong, born Marco Giuseppe Salussolia
FI: Did you learn anything unexpected when making the film?
MLV: “A lot of stuff, the whole story of Gianni Agnelli and his father, the story of how the father passed away…
“Everything else came out of research. Cross-referencing with three or four different sources from the years…
“It was very, very tedious work, but we found the story of him waiting at the train station a bit of a surprise.
“For Juventus fans, we all think we know the story, but then these are the surprises that struck us the most, the little details that we really didn’t know happened.”
FI: How did you find talking to Juve legends?
MLV: “Michel Platini was surreal. Alessandro Del Piero, my favourite player of all time, was one of the toughest interviews because a lot of the time, Mauro and I had to separate the fan from the film director and producer, and it wasn’t so easy.”
FI: What do you hope the way people view Juventus will change after watching this film?
MLV: “I’ll be in a taxi cab in New York or somewhere and they’ll say: ‘Oh Juventus, the guys that cheated!’
“I hope this film will shed a little more light, that it wasn’t as simple as people think it was.
“There’s also that [Juve] aren’t just a brand or logo, there’s a family that’s been behind the club for so many years.
“It’s not only about the Agnelli, that family represents all the families that have been behind the club, like many others.
“It’s just that we have one family that unifies the concept [of Juve] very well, so it’s not just a brand for us.”
FI: Are there any more football projects afoot or possibly a sequel?
MLP: “Definitely! We still haven’t decided which or what, whether it’ll be a film or series, but there’s some interesting stuff in the works.”
Marco and Mauro La Villa are currently on a world tour to promote The Juventus Story. You can catch an advance screening of the film in Tokyo on October 18 and Los Angeles on November 1, ahead of its worldwide release in various formats in November and December.