Crafting Ancestral World

Ancestral World writer, producer and director Enrico De Palo talks to TV Drama about the fantasy feature, which is represented by Wonderphil Entertainment.

Set in a time of demons and Gods battling for domination, the fantasy feature Ancestral World follows a prince on a mission to rescue his brother and recover magical armor stolen by the God of Destruction.

“Everything was born by chance,” De Palo says of the genesis of the movie. “At Lucca Comics & Games I fell in love with the wonderful armor created by Manolo Deiana for cosplayers. I met him, and we decided to create a story around his world, the ‘Ancestral World.’”

De Palo decided to undertake the project as his first directing endeavor. “I knew that I had to manage all aspects of production (having a very limited budget), so I decided in advance to shoot a teaser trailer, to understand where we could have arrived with the visual of the film and with visual effects.”

He enlisted Alessandro Rota as director of photography and tapped the students at the Event Horizon School to make a three-minute promo in just a few weeks’ time.

“With the trailer in hand, I went to Phil Gorn of Wonderphil Entertainment, who I had worked with on previous projects, and asked him if he was interested in co-producing it with me,” De Palo recalls. “He had a happy ‘Yes,’ and the adventure that brought us here began.”

The story is “simple and straightforward,” he says, but the backdrop is a lush one, set in an imaginary world that includes wizards, witches, monsters and Gods.

“The look is the feature of the film—above all, thanks to the armor and costumes of Manolo Deiana,” De Palo says. “Given the limited budget, we have achieved a good visual result. It’s a mixture of products: a film with a video game look and anime-style fights. Or at least that was my initial goal—I’m very happy with the final result.”

De Palo had his hands in nearly all aspects of production, joking with TV Drama that it was “a delirium” to juggle writing, producing and directing. “I had to think of everything, from the choice of the actors to the locations to the flights to the catering. The simplest part, paradoxically, was writing and shooting because I wisely decided to use professionals: Adriano Barone for the script and Alessandro Rota for photography and filming.”

The film has been in production for almost three years, though the seed of the idea was planted more than five years ago. “I would like to thank Phil Gorn for the patience he has had in following a project for so long!” De Palo says.

“Fantasy is always a current genre, and we wink at an audience that I know well because I have been involved in it since I was 10—the world of cosplayers and fans of anime and comics,” he adds. “The film attempts to be a tribute to those worlds. In the film, you will find several references to the cinema of the ’70s and ’80s, John Carpenter and John Milius above all.”