Fabrizio Cattani Brings 'Forever With You' to Sharjah: Children and Grief on Screen

Italian director Fabrizio Cattani premiered "Forever With You" on a Green Carpet at the 13th Sharjah International Film Festival for Children and Youth this week — the first time the film has screened in the Middle East. The festival runs with Italy as its Country of Honor, putting the country's cinema front and center across the program.

The film marks a turn toward younger audiences for Cattani, whose previous work tackled difficult adult subjects. Adapted from an Italian novel of the same name, it follows Filo, a young boy trying to understand the death of his mother. The story is set in 1998, told through flashbacks, and turns Filo's grief into an adventure.

How does the film actually work?

Cattani built the story as a map of the psyche. Each character around Filo stands for one part of his inner world.

• Filo, the protagonist, is the rational part
• Rullo, his friend, is the emotional part
• The father is the mature part
• Amelie is the childish part
• Guelpho is the scary part

"All these parts are inside of us," Cattani told Variety. "I liked using these symbols to deal with such a delicate subject as mourning."

Childhood, for him, was the way in. "He observes the world through the eyes of innocence, which we unfortunately lose when we grow up," the director said. "It allows him to have the strength to explore and understand the importance of small things, the things that have value."

He goes further: "Childhood is very powerful because that's where the person starts. We are sponges as children. What we absorb, we transmit in the later stages of our lives."

What does this change for the film's reach?

Shot in autumn in Calabria, the "toe" at the end of the Italian peninsula's boot, the film makes the region's forests a character in their own right. Cattani calls his film distinctly Italian in its setting, dialects and locally rooted elements. Yet he argues the story travels: "It can open up internationally because the loss of a mother is a theme that unites the whole world."

The placement matters culturally too. Cattani places "Forever With You" within a long Italian tradition of using children to explore larger social and emotional realities, citing Vittorio De Sica's "Bicycle Thieves" as an "absolute masterpiece."

He had already presented the film at the Locarno Film Festival, but Sharjah offered a different test. "I don't know this culture so deeply, so I wanted to understand the reaction of the audience," he said. "What impressed me was seeing the kids after the screening come to thank me, congratulate me and tell me how excited they were by the film."

The reaction confirmed his working principle: "For me, cinema must be emotionally rooted. A story must be emotional. Otherwise, I'm not interested."

Industry pressure and a bridge to the Arab world

Beyond cultural exchange, Cattani sees festivals like SIFF as potential bridges between the Italian and Arab film industries. He says independent filmmaking in Italy faces increasing financial pressure, and he hopes stronger ties could eventually extend to production and financing.

His next film returns to an adult protagonist. Set around the marble quarries of Carrara in Tuscany, where he grew up, it centers on the "medico condotto" — the village doctors who once served small Italian communities and whose role disappeared after changes to the country's health system.

After that, children return. "Young Rebels," now in development, is based on the true story of young scouts who defied a fascist ban on Catholic associations, continued their activities in secret, and helped thousands of people targeted by the regime escape across the mountains into Switzerland.

"It is a film that talks about freedom," Cattani said. "They rebelled against this imposition and decided to embrace freedom and help people who were being persecuted."

He plans to keep exploring childhood on screen: "I think children have a lot to say and a lot to give to adults. Today's young people have an incredible maturity."