Pierfrancesco Favino Discusses the Beauty of Freedom and Cinema in ‘My Tennis Maestro’

Zak Ahmed of FeatureFirst sat down with actor Pierfrancesco Favino. Favino stars in an Italian feature film, My Tennis Maestro. The film made its debut at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

Here is the logline for the film:

A teen tennis prodigy struggles with his father’s expectations while embarking on a transformative coastal Italian training tour with his coach, an ex-champion who lost his way.

[Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.]

Zakariya Ahmed: What do you see as the path to freedom in the world of sports and cinema?

Pierfrancesco Favino: Freedom? Oh wow. If we talk about tennis, you’re alone on the pitch. It’s a very stressful sport and I think this is what we wanted to talk about. We even say that in the movie. So, when you’re there, you’re alone. You can’t blame anyone but yourself. I don’t know how free you can feel. Therefore, I think that the story that we tell has a lot to do with the expectations of other people on you.

With the fact that everybody seems to want to become a champion and it’s so difficult and it’s so rare that you have to embrace the idea of failure. But when you’re young and when you have your father that’s pushing so much for your success, it’s kind of hard unless you meet a very defeated guy in life that can teach you that you can be in life even without winning forcedly.

Zak: Speaking about your character Raul, a former self-claimed champion and his relationship with Tiziano’s character Felice, how do you develop that dynamic with someone who’s so young, you have such a clear difference in ideology yet you want to encourage him, to inspire him to adapt your own worldview of being free and less rigid?

Pierfrancesco: Well, this is a character that has no other option but of that one, maybe pretending to be good at teaching because when we meet him, he’s in a hospital. He has a mental condition, and he needs money. All of the choices he made in life are wrong. He tries to reinvent himself in doing the only thing that he’s able to do which is play tennis. I mean, he’s a former professional tennis player but even when he had the chance to win, he escaped. So, when he sees that the father of this kid, taught him to play in a very defensive way, he just wants him to enjoy it. He has a feeling that he doesn’t enjoy it so he tries to tell him, “Go there, attack and just have fun.”

Try to have fun. That’s basically what he wants to do. Then we’ll discover in the story that, he’s been trying to have fun as a man in the wrong way. But then, I think that Andrea Di Stefano wanted to tell a story of 2 defeated people that in the end made a victory, not in tennis, but in life. It’s a buddy movie. A feel good movie and that’s kind of a very classic story but with a touch of something different because there’s no fear in going deep into, even the suffering of this man and the kid too.

Zak: Speaking of Andrea, you already had a previous film 2 years ago, Last Night of Amore and that film is a crime romance thriller. How did you shift from that kind of world into one of sports?

Pierfrancesco: We were promoting the last night of amore movie and we were talking about what we would have liked to do next. Andrea wrote this script of Il Maestro in 2006. It’s the first script that he wrote. And he says that he in that moment he sensed, he felt that I could have gone in the depth of this character because he felt that I was ready to face it. So, he said I think I have a story for you and when he gave it to me I said okay so why this? It looked like a big step but this is what I in a way I wanted to do.

My feeling is that I want to challenge myself to do something different. I’ve never done quite the same kind of movie. I’m interested in genre movies but I don’t want to be specifically doing only action movies or I don’t know heroic movies or war movies whatever the genre you might think of. I like comedy very much and so I said okay you know what I trust you lets go. Even the script was starting to take its shape. It wasn’t defined very well and it hasn’t been defined until the end of the movie. With Andrea we work like that. Of course, there’s a structure but then there’s a surprise of what happens on set. There’s life and then there’s the young character and whenever you have to play with kids or adolescents, you know that they will bring on set their life too in a more unpredictable way. So I really wanted to be in that surfing in that moment. And going on set and say okay let’s see what happens today. I know what the scene is about. I know what the story is about but let’s see what we’ll find out while on set.

Zak: As an actor, when you’re creating a distinction between different genres of performance, as you’ve mentioned comedy and previously dramatic roles, how much of yourself do you give into comedy vs drama and where does the line begin or end.

Pierfrancesco: I don’t think that genre can take you to bring or not bring your life into what you’re doing. I always do. Of course, it’s all of the movie. It’s the tone of the movie changes but it’s not just you as an actor who brings it to the screen. So, there’s always a part of me in what I do, even if I do an action movie. It’s always the script, the director, the partners you’re working with that bring, that give you the opportunity to unveil maybe or to discover with them, that there are sides of you as a man, that might be useful to the experience of the character.

So, I can’t say that I did it more in this occasion than in the previous one. Those are just different tones of my emotions and of course my life is nurturing this story because it couldn’t be otherwise. It would be very boring for me to go on set, just saying the line without really participating or thinking about what’s going on inside of me while I am giving that performance.

Zak: Recently, you worked on Maria and The Count of Monte Cristo, now this film. You seem to be working on a lot of movies quite consistently. Do you relish in being so busy or do you like it when you have space between movies?

Pierfrancesco: Last year, I had smaller parts in different movies. I love acting. I’m lucky enough to be called and cast with different directors all over the world. It’s something I like. I took a break before starting this movie, so I ended Maria in November 2023 and we didn’t start this up until September 2024. So I felt I needed to take a break, and I did and then we started this one. It depends on my energies and how I feel. Luckily enough, I can afford it now. I like being busy but everything depends on my physical and emotional conditions so I was very happy to do this movie. I had to dig into something very deep, therefore, I took a break after that.

I’m not forcedly asking myself to be on set everyday. But when I get the offer to be in Maria with Pablo Larrain or to be in The Count of Monte Cristo together with that bunch of great actors and directors, you want to be there also. So I consider myself lucky enough to have the chance to work in Italian and French cinema, and international movies and I hope this is going to continue if it’s possible.

Zak: Who do you think would win in a match between yourself and Andrea?

Pierfrancesco: Hahaha definitely him! He plays very well, he was my maestro during the film. He played at quite a good level. There’s unfortunately no game between us

Zak: Do you think he could mentor you and you beat him?

Pierfrancesco: I don’t know. He said that he wanted to do that but I don’t know. I should work less and focus more on tennis haha. Let’s see. Maybe I’ll take a break and focus on that and I’ll let you know.

Il Maestro premiered in Venice Film Festival on 31st August

Thanks for reading our interview with Pierfrancesco Favino. For more, stay tuned here at Feature First.