Very good details on the project in this article, and some great photos: https://www.cagliariartmagazine.it/
Key points:
- Three Italian friends who work in the TV industry got talking in a bar and launched the project during the COVID lockdown. It's a self-funded passion project.
- Andrea Sassetti has at least one Andrea Moda car and even drove it at Misano on the early 00s. All the remaining parts of the Andrea Moda F1 team are piled up in his basement "like an old furniture store"
- Formula 1 rejected the filmmakers' request to use F1 archive for the project because it would show F1 in a negative light. (What a missed opportunity!)
- The documentary is three episodes, rather than a feature-length documentary
- The article suggests the project is being presented as a mini-series at the Venice Film Festival
Full article is here (Google translation):
The people of Formula 1 enthusiasts and not only are anxious for the imminent release of "Last and Furious - the true story of Andrea Moda Formula", a docufilm that traces the epic story of Andrea Moda, an Italian team that can boast participation in a grand prix, that of Monaco in 1992 thanks to the feat of the Brazilian driver Roberto Moreno who managed to pass the pre-qualifications and finish eleven of the seventy-eight laps scheduled before a mechanical failure put an end to this beautiful tale.
Today I have the pleasure of interviewing for the Friends of "Cagliari Art Magazine" Massimiliano Sbrolla director and, together with Giordano Viozzi and Cristiano Coini one of the three authors of what is about to become one of the most realistic television docu-series dedicated to Formula 1 and cool on the international scene.
Roberto Brunelli: Hello Massimiliano, how did the idea of this documentary come about and why specifically about Andrea Moda?
Massimiliano Sbrolla:It was destiny that we told this story. Giordano, Cristiano and I are originally from this Marche hinterland. We had breathed the tragicomic events of Andrea Moda since we were kids. Then 30 years later, all three of us having followed a professional path in the world of television production, we found ourselves sitting in a bar saying "Think how nice it would be to track down Andrea Sassetti and find out how things really went". That bar, we later discovered, was exactly 7 km from where Andrea Sassetti lived. We set off quietly. Then the world closed the following month due to Covid. It was the project that kept us alive (professionally speaking) during that crazy time. We have been overwhelmed in 3 long years of discoveries, phone calls, meetings, difficulties, failures, successes and crazy anecdotes. Slowly we realized that we had something great in our hands, which in its small way contained everything a motor enthusiast wanted. The best thing about this experience was the affection of the people who started following us on social networks. Starting with Mattia Valenti, who from the beginning as a simple fan of the Monte San Pietrangeli stable offered to manage Last & Furious' Instagram and Facebook. From then on, people started contacting us every day to give us a contribution: some sent us unpublished photos, some a newspaper clipping, some gave us tips on a person we were looking for, some urged us not to give up in moments of difficulty. The best thing about this experience was the affection of the people who started following us on social networks. Starting with Mattia Valenti, who from the beginning as a simple fan of the Monte San Pietrangeli stable offered to manage Last & Furious' Instagram and Facebook. From then on, people started contacting us every day to give us a contribution: some sent us unpublished photos, some a newspaper clipping, some gave us tips on a person we were looking for, some urged us not to give up in moments of difficulty. The best thing about this experience was the affection of the people who started following us on social networks. Starting with Mattia Valenti, who from the beginning as a simple fan of the Monte San Pietrangeli stable offered to manage Last & Furious' Instagram and Facebook. From then on, people started contacting us every day to give us a contribution: some sent us unpublished photos, some a newspaper clipping, some gave us tips on a person we were looking for, some urged us not to give up in moments of difficulty.
RB: The 1990s had begun as a return to the past, where small artisan teams, garage owners as Enzo Ferrari called them "the Drake", could once again attempt an adventure in the top motoring series. Just think of the unfortunate experience of the LIFE F190 with its revolutionary W12 engine in 1990. We now come to the almost mythological figure of the Team patron, the entrepreneur from the Marche region in the footwear sector, Andrea Sassetti, you who had the pleasure of interviewing him what Can you tell us more about the man or, better, about his dream of racing in Formula One?
MS:Andrea was crazy. In the good sense of the word. His life at 300 km/h has led him to reach great goals but also often end up off-road. He's not a saint, he's not a bandit. And Sassetti. Point. With him, a good friendship has been created even if at the beginning she didn't remember anything (or pretended) of the details of his adventure. We have reconstructed names, events and contacts step by step with a crazy research work. I get chills when I think about what we did. To give you some examples: we tracked down two women in Germany who at the time took unedited photos of the team, starting from an address from 30 years ago and 2 first names. We found an important mechanic of the team going around the towns of Umbria ringing door to door because we knew he had a workshop in those areas. And so many more surprises you will see in the doc.
RB: But is it true what we read on the web that Sassetti takes to the track today at Misano sull'Andrea Moda?
MS: No. It happened until the beginning of the 2000s. Then the cars…disappeared…the story of the cars is one of the threads that are told in the documentary, full of mystery and twists
RB: Having followed the story of Andrea Moda myself, I have always found the flood of comments that one reads on the web about the Team ungenerous, which is described as one of the "poorest" of the Formula One circus. After all, Sassetti and Andrea Moda, thanks to the extraordinary skills of the driver Moreno managed to be one of the teams that saw the car take to the track to compete in a grand prix. Where, in your opinion, does this "superficiality" in having described the team's epic story before your docu-film come from?
MS:We started from the idea of telling the story of the last of the last. On the web, this team is considered the shame of formula 1. So much so that, when we approached F1 to have access to their video archives, the answer froze us "sorry, but we are not interested in this project because it risks putting bad light on the reputation of Formula 1”. 30 years later, was Sassetti still shaking the Circus? This surprised us, made us laugh and worried us at the same time. Luckily we managed to get a glimpse of F1 thanks to the help of a great journalist, former director of Rombo Franco Panariti. And today we are here eager to show the world this work and we are certain that at the end of the 3 episodes each of you, with a tear running down your face, will say "what an absurd story"
RB: And yes, Roberto "Pupo" Moreno was undoubtedly one of the best drivers that Formula One has had in the last thirty years, if one thinks of the "miracle" he performed in Monaco in 1992. I like to quote in this regard my fellow citizen and childhood friend Vincenzo Sospiri another great driver who "lacked luck (understood as the car) not value". How did you track down Moreno and tell us if he immediately accepted to take part in your project.
MS:Roberto is a unique, wonderful person. We managed, after a year and a half of messages and phone calls, to get him to come to Italy from Miami, to give him the interview. I remember that during the lockdown I had left my phone number to a thousand people who could know it to get in touch. I had written dozens of emails without success. Then one afternoon, between one Covid bulletin and another, my phone rings. Foreign number. "Hello, I'm Roberto Pupo Moreno... I know you're looking for me". It was a unique emotional moment. From there we wrote to each other daily. And he said to me “Finally someone who had the courage to tell this story”. Finally, a few days ago, when we showed him a preview of the 3 episodes, he sent us a moved vowel... he didn't imagine such a professional and passionate job.
RB: In 2017 on the occasion of an article I wrote for the Exhibition dedicated to the great Ayrton Senna at the Lamborghini Factory, I had the opportunity to write "There is a lot of excitement today among collectors from all over the world of sports car memorabilia and spare parts for racing cars” in your search for material for the film, have you met collectors who have opened their collections to lend you material on Andrea Moda? If so, were they jealous of their memorabilia or did they willingly share it?
MS: The only owner in the world of Andrea Moda memorabilia is I think Andrea Sassetti. The day he opened his old basement to us where he still keeps everything that's left of the team, we felt like we were entering the Sistine Chapel of formula 1. But you don't have to imagine display cases or shop windows. Everything was, and is, piled up like an old abandoned furniture store. A mystical experience.
RB: To get to know you better, were you already collectors of memorable sports cars or maybe you became one during the filming and research of material?
MS: Before this story, we weren't even motor enthusiasts. We captured the life story of this character and all the people who stood by him. Which was the backdrop to the racing world. Because, in our opinion, this is also a unique, amusing, tragic, fraudulent human story. A story destined to surprise even those who have never seen a grand prix.
RB: In thanking you for the interview, I would like to ask if you can give us any anticipation about the release and where we could watch the series?
MS:My production company, zoofactory srl, despite working for years for large broadcasters, is a small reality. Together with Giordano Viozzi and Cristiano Coini, we embarked on a project that has become much bigger than us. Both from the point of view of work and from the economic point of view (the documentary was totally self-financed). Traveling around Italy and the world to do interviews, buy photographic and video material, get to the negotiating table with a giant like Formula 1 was difficult, exciting and demanding. Especially if you think that we did everything in our spare time, between one production and another (thanks to which we could finance the work). But we are sure that once the games are over everyone will appreciate the goodness and uniqueness of our efforts. The story of Andrea Moda is a bit like the parable of life:
Edited by potmotr, 09 August 2023 - 11:43.
