TORONTO – One of the most sought after creators in the Animation world, Lino Di Salvo, an Oscar winning Writer, Director and Producer, is bringing Lombard folklore to the big screen with his latest project – Twisted. 

The setting is a small town in the Valcamonica Valley in Lombardy, where villagers have for centuries feasted on the eve of the Epiphany after hunting the forest-dwelling horned cryptid known as the Badalisc. The ritual involves a fictitious search party and hunt for the Badalisc, which once “captured” is paraded through town, where it eventually speaks.

The event culminates with a speech given in gibberish by the Badalisc (a Villager in costume) and translated by the “town Interpreter” – but what has caught the curiosity of outsiders specifically, is the nature of this Lombard beast. The Badalisc exposes the villagers’ gossip, grudges and hostilities — having spied on them throughout the year. The feast, in essence, is seen as a ritual that restores peace and harmony for the New Year. The Badalisc festival is in effect a purge, realized through a town roast.

Di Salvo’s Twisted will be an animated coming-of-age film about a disillusioned Italian teenager who teams up with the recently banished Badalisc, to save the town from an evil curse. “Our movie picks up where everyone has gotten so sick of this guy [the Badalisc] revealing everyone’s secrets every year, that they kick him out of town,” says Di Salvo. “He’s been the star of the show for hundreds of years, and they banish him”. The mythical creature finds an unlikely sympathizer in Angelina, a loquacious teenager who works in her family’s pizzeria. “Her family has this expectation that she’s going to be the next Prime Minister…things that Italian families want for you to succeed”, explains Di Salvo. Her dilemma: she wants to be a great pizzaiolo instead, but decides, “It’s just easier to tell people what they want to hear…she basically lies to everybody,” explained the Director heading into Rome’s MIA Market this week.

Italian audiences will be particularly pleased that the inspiration for bringing this Lombard folklore to cinemas is inspired by Di Salvo’s own Italian heritage. “Being a first-generation Italian American and belonging to a family that was traditional but also interestingly modern in their take, they had expectations for me. I was going to be the first Di Salvo not to make pizza”.

Eventually, and by age twenty, Di Salvo began an impressive seventeen-year career at Walt Disney Animation Studios, heading animation for the spectacularly successful film Frozen – currently the 14th highest grossing film of all time with $1.4 billion earned at the global box office. Fans will also know Di Salvo’s work from two other smash hits Tangled and Bolt, serving as the Supervising Animator on both films. With so few films in theatres that do little more than rinse and repeat, Twisted portends to be an interesting depiction of a fascinating but otherwise unknown town. And for history lovers and adventurous inquisitors, they’ll also discover that Valcamonica curiously has one of the world’s greatest collections of prehistoric petroglyphs dating as far back as 8000 years – which include 140,000 symbols and figures carved into the rocks.

Badalisc Card Art by Artist Pigeonpullover, from Fandom.com; Twisted Poster Image Courtesy of Mediawan Kids & Family   

Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix