HEADS OR TAILS?
(Testa o croce?)
2025, 115′
Director: Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis
Country: Italy, USA
Distributor: 01 Distribution
Language: OV Italian and English with Italian subtitles
UNRELEASED
At the dawn of the 20th century, Buffalo Bill’s (John C. Reilly) Wild West Show arrives in Rome to sell Italians the myth of the American frontier. During a rodeo between cowboys and local butteri, Rosa (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), the young wife of a powerful landowner, falls in love with Santino (Alessandro Borghi), the local horseman who has defeated the Americans. After her husband’s murder, Rosa and Santino run away together, but a large bounty is placed on Santino’s head.
Four years after their luminous debut with The Tale of King Crab (2021), Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis return behind the camera with a captivating picaresque story that explores their passion for myths, legends, and the oral traditions that shape their cinema. Presented in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Heads or Tails? draws inspiration from Buffalo Bill’s traveling show to create a contemporary western with a lyrical, fairy-tale quality. Alternating between different formats and genres, the Italian-American directors deliver an ambitious and powerful work, enriched by an outstanding cast, while preserving the artisanal and deeply free spirit of their style. “With Heads or Tails? we staged a western ballad set in Italy, an anti-western that starts from classic premises (the cowboy, the duel, the escape), before gradually transforming into something more magical and surreal. Our aim was to break the conventions of the genre, reinterpreting it through an Italian and contemporary lens” (Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis).
Followed by a conversation between the directors Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, Paolo Moretti, and Daniela Persico.
BIOGRAPHY
Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis began their collaboration in 2013 with the short film Belva Nera, a critically acclaimed documentary that won an award at the Cinéma du Réel festival in Paris. In 2015, they directed the documentary feature film Il solengo, an investigation into the stories told by a group of hunters from the Tuscia region of Lazio, which was presented at numerous international festivals including Rotterdam, DocLisboa, and BAFICI. In 2021, they presented at the Directors’ Fortnight of the Cannes Film Festival The Tale of King Crab, their first fiction feature film, in which the interest in folk tales and rural legends explored in their earlier works found a new form. In 2025, they returned to the Cannes Film Festival with Heads or Tails?, a story between myth and reality that revisits the western genre, competing in the Un Certain Regard section.
On Sunday, 28 September, Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis will join Paolo Moretti and Daniela Persico for a conversation following the screening of Heads or Tails?.