Niccolò Ammaniti tells "the quest" of Anna, the heroine of his series

An initiatory journey that sails between

and

 !

Two years after the success of

Niccolò Ammaniti returns this Thursday at 8:55 pm on Arte avec

a new miniseries adapted from his eponymous novel, published in 2015. This dark, baroque and poetic tale in six episodes tells the story of the initiatory journey of ' 13-year-old Anna, in search of her brother, in a world ravaged by a strange pandemic where only children have survived.

The Italian writer spoke about this strangely visionary work, allegory of a world after in the hands of children, with

during the last edition of Séries Mania.

Why did you make your post-apocalyptic world a world without adults?

With “Anna” I wanted to imagine how such a world would work.

What would be the rules of this world?

How could we return to a primitive world where the law is that of the strongest?

I also wanted to understand the role of memory.

We can imagine our future because we know our past.

It was also interesting to imagine how a world could evolve without any memory or transmission.

Anna has the notebooks her mother left for her.

Your heroine has a bit of memory, right?

Exactly !

Anna is the only one with a little memory thanks to these notebooks.

His mother gave him rules, especially the one that says: “You must teach your brother to read”.

In the books, there is the story of who we are.

Anna's mother also writes to her that she will not be able to take care of her brother.

She thus gives birth to Anna's sense of guilt.

I believe that one of the engines of human existence is the feeling of guilt.

Other children do not know this feeling.

Anna is the only one to feel it.

As she feels bad, that she does not feel capable, she will try to find other ways.

Your novel “Anna” was released in 2015, the coronavirus pandemic began six months after the shooting… How did you experience this collusion between reality and your fiction?

It surprised me a lot!

I was also very worried.

I thought we weren't going to be able to finish this series.

It is true that there are coincidences, that we can draw some parallels ... But I did not try to explore that.

I do not feel like a visionary… In this fiction, the virus is only a means to tell about a world without adults.

Suddenly, this implies a casting almost entirely made up of children, it was not complicated to direct them, in particular in certain violent scenes?

My favorite thing is working with children!

The child does not have a global vision, he works scene by scene.

This is probably the best way to go.

The problems of understanding the story, I had them with the adult actors!

The actors never accept to be totally directed… This leads to unnecessary conflicts that I can't stand.

Children follow you because they trust you.

Building this relationship of trust is difficult at first, but once it is in place, the exchange begins.

You cite Werner Herzog as a cinematographic influence… Personally, I have seen nods to Pasolini, to Fellini and the fact of working with non-professional actors like children is reminiscent of Italian neorealism…

Yes, many Italian directors like Ettore Scola, Mario Monicelli, but especially Vittorio De Sica, have worked with children.

On the set of

, it was not easy with the professional actors.

Maybe I wasn't seasoned enough at the time.

But it turns out that I am planning to shoot my first film and I think that I will only work with non-professionals, because they give a lot.

As in "Il Miracolo", the sacred is always present, but seems to be in the background ...

The sacred appears in particular with this kind of temple, very strangely animist, that Anna and her brother build around their mother's bones which they cover with jewelry, toys, etc. They honor their mother's body as if it were that of a goddess. Animism interested me a lot because it is about the roots of the sacred. Throughout the episodes, we see the stages of consumption of Anna's mother's corpse: it swells, mummifies, and becomes something almost mineral. Growing up, Anna decides to bury her mother's remains underground… All the children in the series question each other and provide their answer to what life after death is. I loved the idea of ​​exploring this primitive and simplistic aspect of faith and imagining the very simple answers children give to this question.

Is the hope that animates Anna throughout your work linked to her vision of life after death?

Anna is animated by something else.

She's the only one who asks, "Are all the adults dead?"

".

This is Anna's engine.

It is because she carries this hope and is motivated by this quest that Anna embodies the best of humanity.

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