Filming of 'The White Club' wrapped up in Ticino

Five days of filming in Mendrisiotto. And so ended the tour of Michele Pennetta's The White Club. From Tuesday 19 to Saturday 23 March, the last scenes of the film were shot between Balerna, Morbio Inferiore and Stabio. The evocative Saceba industrial plant, with its complex of tunnels and adjacent caves, was the main location in Ticino.

Produced by the Geneva-based Beauvoir Films, in co-production with the Italian Indyca Film and Nefertiti Film, the Slovenian Vertigo and RSI - Radiotelevisione svizzera, "The White Club" tells a story of human trafficking. The protagonist is 20-year-old Mirko (played by Costantino Seghi) who is responsible for delivering Nina (Aulona Selmani) and Lejla (Era Malaj), two undocumented underage Kosovar sisters, to the luxurious White Club near Trieste run by his mother Ofelia (Anita Kravos). Despite the carefully planned trip, a group of paramilitaries intercept the trio at the border. Lejla is kidnapped. Only Nina manages to get to the White Club and in an attempt to find her sister, she leads Mirko on her trail.

The organisation of the filming in our canton was coordinated by Lugano-based Central Productions. A score of Ticino film professionals participated in the production, some of whom - such as assistant director Simone Visparelli or script supervisor Francesca Vegezzi - took part in the making of the entire film, which was shot near Trieste before reaching Ticino.

Michele Pennetta, a director born in the province of Varese and who studied in Ticino and Geneva, is the director of, among others, the documentaries "Il mio corpo" presented at Cannes in 2020 and "Lonely", which had its world premiere in 2023 at the Zurich Film Festival. "The White Club", supported by the Ticino Film Commission, is his first fiction feature film.