"Rose Island"
Netflix announces the adaptation of the incredible Italian story about "Rose Island" which follows the true story of Giorgio Rosa, an Italian engineer that in the late 1960s built his own island in Rimini, in the Adriatic sea, which housed a restaurant, bar, souvenir shop, and even a post office.
"It's the sort of tale in Rimini that grandparents tell their children and grandchildren," explains the film's producer Matteo Rovere. "It's a very famous story, but only in Rimini. We thought it was an incredible story, and very strange that we didn't know about it."
The story begins in 1967, when Rosa set out to build a micro-nation, which was intended to be a symbol of freedom. Many people at the time thought he must be crazy to attempt such a feat. But, as his real-life son points out, the building of L'Isola delle Rose required a great deal of technical know-how.
"My father was an engineer, and in Italy, it would be enough to describe him like this to understand what kind of person he was," Lorenzo Rosa explains. "He was a very precise, detailed person, and very organised. An engineer in an almost German sense of the word. Except for this small vein of craziness that led him to want to build a platform for himself, and then make it a state outside of territorial waters, which kind of made him the prince of anarchists."
Netflix's adaptation of the story is part of the streaming service's drive to produce more titles, not in the English language with worldwide appeal. The dialogue is Italian, although subtitles and dubbing are available for international audiences. The prolific Italian actor Elio Germano stars as Rosa, while his love interest is portrayed by Matilda De Angelis, who recently played Elena in HBO's “The Undoing”.
The film zones in on Rosa's battle with the Italian authorities; a lot of scenes take place in the meeting rooms of the government, where Rosa was summoned to explain himself. But the engineer, who was in his 40s at the time, was unwavering in his position that he had not broken any laws by building the island, and there was no reason it should be destroyed.
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