Among the fifteen short films in the shortlist for the 2024 Oscars in the Best Live Action Short Film category there is also “a bit of Italy” represented by Elettra Pizzi, producer of GOOD BOY directed by Tom Stuart with Ben Whishaw and Marion Bailey.
Elettra Pizzi studied in Milan, first at the Brera Art School and then at the Catholic University, where from a very young age she made short films with friends, discovering a passion for creative production. Having moved to the United Kingdom, she founded the production company 130 Elektra Films with which she produced documentaries and short films, such as the award-winning The Act by Thomas Hescott and The Dead Ones by Stefan Georgiou. Elettra Pizzi has also produced several British TV series and the feature-length documentary Gualtiero Marchesi – The Great Italian by Maurizio Gigola, distributed in Italian cinemas by Twelve Entertainment.
“We have worked a lot in the last two months – commented Elettra Pizzi – in making GOOD BOY known, a film in which we believe a lot and which we love, but the announcement still took us by surprise, especially discovering that we were competing alongside great names like Wes Anderson and Pedro Almodóvar.”
GOOD BOY drags us into the passenger seat of a carefree journey undertaken by a desperate young man, in the company of his mother and a dead pigeon. A surreal film that represents the directorial debut of actor Tom Stuart (The Mole, The Borgias), already co-screenwriter of Mainstream directed by Gia Coppola and presented at the 77th Venice International Film Festival.
The protagonists are the English actor, already winner of three Bafta Awards, Ben Whishaw (Women Talking, Passages) and the two-time winner of a Sag Award Marion Bailey (The Secret of Vera Drake, The Crown).
Filmed last April in Somerset, in the area that a few weeks later would host the historic Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, GOOD BOY saw the participation of Elettra Pizzi right from the early stages of production, when Tom Stuart sent her the first draft of the screenplay, written following the death of his mother.
“Tom is a wonderful writer – continues Elettra Pizzi – and a director who has already won the hearts of many spectators with his first work. It’s impossible not to fall in love with his characters. I quickly realized that this story needed a lot of work and love and I absolutely wanted to help bring it to the screen.”
The production of GOOD BOY lasted four days of shooting and three months of post-production, followed by the “small and independent” 130 Elektra Films of Elettra Pizzi, here joined in the production by Kay Loxley, Max Marlow and Tom Stuart himself, and from executive producers Alex Gonzalez, Chris Questad and Gia Coppola.
GOOD BOY premiered at this year’s Glastonbury Festival where actress Tilda Swinton praised it as “a beautiful film”, and subsequently selected at the Leeds Film Festival (UK), PÖFF (Estonia), Aesthetica Short Film Festival (UK), the Norwich Film Festival (UK), the nominations for the Bafta and the 2024 Oscars, the official top five of which will be announced on January 23rd.