Modi - Three Days on the Wing of Madness

A seventy-two-hour whirlwind in the life of bohemian artist Amedeo Modigliani, known as ‘Modi’ to his friends, follows a chaotic series of events through the streets of war torn Paris in 1916. On the run from the police, the desire to end his career and leave the city is dismissed by fellow artists Maurice Utrillo, Chaim Soutine and Modi’s muse, Beatrice Hastings. Modi seeks advice from his art dealer and friend, Leopold Zborowski - however, after a night of hallucinations, the chaos in Modi’s mind reaches a crescendo when faced with an American collector, Maurice Gangnat, who has the power to change his life.

COMMENTARY
Not a biopic, but just 72 hours in the life of Amedeo Modigliani, Modì, to the French. In 1916, the painter is hiding out from the police, in Paris. He’s ready to leave the city he has lived in so long, but his friends Utrillo and Soutine and his muse Beatrice Hastings try to convince him to stay and keep on painting. In the space of one night of hallucinations and encounters with an art dealer friend and an American collector, Modì’s life changes.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
Dennis Hopper once said that quote: “If it were denied you to create, would you truly die?” and I think for Amedeo Modigliani, the answer was ‘Yes.’ He was at the mercy of his talents and his mercurial nature. There was no other avenue available to him. No other avenue he would have ever considered. Even after he destroyed everything, there was only one path to take: start over again, for he was born to create. Ultimately, I wanted to tell a universal tale of love, art and rejection so that anyone could find something to wrestle with, something to associate and connect with, in that infinite tangle we know only as life, as existence, the very result of creation itself.