TORONTO – Following its screening at the Cannes Film Festival, the irrepressible Czech-Italian coproduction Caravan will finally have its theatrical release in Italy on August 7th, via Wanted. The Italian Distribution company focuses on art-house and independent projects, opting for films that might otherwise go unnoticed. And Caravan is just that: a road movie that follows the complicated journey of a mother and her disabled son across Italy.
The film was shot entirely in Italy over a five-week period, between Emilia Romagna and Calabria. “We were discouraged from making the film for a long time. Many thought the project was too ambitious, especially given the plan to cast a non-actor with a disability”, explained Director Zuzana Kirchnerová. In the role of the disabled son David, Kirchnerová cast David Vodstrcil, a classmate of her son’s.
Kirchnerová’s story and screenplay drew inspiration from her own journey raising a son with down syndrome and autism spectrum disorder. “David goes to the same school as my son. That made me hesitant at first. I wanted to be on set as a director, not as a mom. I worried it would be too personal. But David was wonderful and there was simply no other way”, she explained.
The making of the film endured its fair share of hitches. From its pre-pandemic announcement in 2019 to its Premier in 2025, the film took approximately six years to be realized. But it was the “ambitious” and unconventional nature of the production that caught the eye of Carlo Cresto-Dina, head of Production Company Tempesta Film.
“When Zuzana came to us with the idea of shooting a film in Italy, what struck us, reading her first notes, talking to her – was the absence of a postcard image of our country,” Cresto-Dina explains. “The film had a true, lived vision. It depicted Italy in all its breadth and variety”. A sentiment commonly shared among Italians, and not just within the film industry.
Plenty of Italy’s culture mains untapped between the Alps and Mount Etna, as tourists and Italians alike tend to flock to its major cities and coastal beach towns. “I live abroad and I know how difficult it is to explain the true meaning of Italy’s length. Caravan captures this: not just a physical journey, but a lucid and delicate look at our country’s present”, continued Cresto-Dina.
Yet still, it was the “dreamy Italian summer” that drew Zuzana Kirchnerová to set her story in the Bel Paese. “For us Czechs, Italy has always been a summer dream. Without the sea, being a country at the heart of Europe, we look longingly to the Mediterranean. Italy is the closest destination, and over time it has become a true symbol of escape, light, and warmth”.
The Director continued, “There’s something magical about Italian light. It can transform every landscape into a movie scene. And then, of course, there’s the Italian cinema I love: from Fellini to Alice Rohrwacher”.
It seems there’s no escaping the charm of “postcard Italy”.
(Images of Caravan courtesy of MasterFilm, Nutprodukcia and Tempesta Films)
Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix
