The making of My Brilliant Friend, has been one the most demanding and most exciting production challenges for our region ever. The international production team and director Saverio Costanzo’s avowed commitment to the realistic representation of faces, settings and moods of 1950’s Naples, required an unprecedented deployment of resources, energies and professional expertise from the local audiovisual sector – significantly involved in the making of the series – as well as from local institutions, chiefly from the Campania Regional Government. The latter body granted both financial support and organizational aid through the services of FCRC.

The challenging endeavour, started early in 2017, to find an area to accommodate the set and to build 20,000 square metres of scenic structures required extensive research and preparation in which FCRC teamed up with the series production and art departments. Rione Luzzatti, the working class neighbourhood in the suburbs of Naples, where most of the story unfolds, was recreated in its 1950s form, thanks to meticulous reconstruction work – comprising 14 buildings, 5 interiors, a church and a tunnel – in a former industrial complex near the town of Caserta. Casting for the lead and supporting roles was just as painstaking and thorough. Over a period of eight months almost 9000 children and 500 adults, professional and non-professional actors, from all over Campania were auditioned.

FCRC facilitated the involvement in the scouting and auditioning process of a large number of schools all over Naples and other towns in Campania. On-location shooting equally required substantial and meticulous art department work and special dedication on the part of FCRC and local authorities. Filming started in Octobre 2017 in the province of Caserta and continued in Naples and the island of Ischia.  In the city of Naples filming took place in Piazza del Plebiscito, Galleria Principe di Napoli, Molo San Vincenzo, the Bourbon quay in the Port, and Palazzo Gravina, home to the Department of Architecture of the Federico II University of Naples where school and office settings were reconstructed.