Why these stories

At ITACA Pictures, every project begins with a reason that exists before production, before financing, before strategy.

Sometimes a story arrives because it exposes something uncomfortable. Sometimes because it touches a silence that has been left untouched for too long. Sometimes because it allows us to test what we believe cinema can do when resources are limited but intention is precise.

These notes exist to explain why certain projects were chosen, what they revealed to us, and why they had to be made.

Filthy

Filthy became our first project because we wanted to begin with something visually ambitious enough to test our own limits.

Rather than starting small, we chose a project that demanded atmosphere, control, aesthetic precision and tension, because we wanted our first statement as a company to be clear: we are interested in cinematic language that can hold complexity even when dialogue steps back.

It was also important that the project carried contradiction. Beauty, privilege and desire are often trusted too quickly on screen. Filthy asks what happens when elegance becomes the surface beneath which something darker quietly breathes.

For us, it was less about proving scale, and more about proving intention.

Frigid

Frigid arrived for a different reason. After proving visual ambition, we wanted the next project to show equal precision in narrative selection.

The subject immediately felt urgent because vaginismus remains surrounded by silence, not only socially but also medically, where many people still encounter confusion, dismissal or solutions that fail to address the full emotional reality of the condition.

What drew us to the story was its contradiction: something painful, intimate and isolating could also contain absurdity, humour and deep tenderness.

Dark comedy became the right language because embarrassment itself already carries theatricality. Sometimes what people struggle most to say is exactly what cinema should dare to stage.