Mystery and rural Italy blend in ‘Heads or Tails?’, screened at Un Certain Regard

CANNES – He wasn’t just a legend, but a real figure: Buffalo Bill. He’s the pop icon around whom Heads or Tails? (Testa o Croce?), the new film by Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, revolves, presented in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show arrives in Rome, selling the myth of the frontier. Amidst a horse-taming competition between American cowboys and Italian butteri, Rosa (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), the young wife of a local landowner, falls in love with Santino (Alessandro Borghi), a handsome, orphaned, and romantic buttero who wins the contest. The plot then takes on thriller tones, as a bounty is placed on Santino’s head, while Rosa dreams of America, because “there you can become whoever you want to be.”

During a meeting with the Italian press ahead of the film’s official premiere at Cannes, De Righi and Zoppis explained: “We wanted to make an Italian western set in Italy. Buffalo Bill toured Europe, and during one of his two visits to Italy, there’s a tale of a showdown between Italian butteri and American cowboys. We’ve known this story since we were kids and it felt like the perfect starting point for the film. The classic western is our starting line, and then we shift to the story of Santino and Rosa. The idea was to play with the genre, to build a film on a classic premise and then travel through western subgenres.”

Speaking about his character Santino, a character from the archetypal macho western hero, Borghi said: “The only skill he has is riding a horse. He doesn’t know how to shoot or how to fall in love; he simply lacks the tools to be anything else. His vulnerabilities and limitations shape his character. In the end, he’s battered by circumstances but rescued by Rosa. He’s a charming fool, a symbol of what we all are, after all, as men. This film aims to challenge many traditional ideas and expectations.”

One of those balances is the all-male imagery of the western genre. The directors confirm: “The aim was to subvert the genre, as an act of cinephile passion, and to build our own version of it. The title, for example, represents the two sides of a coin: the film starts with Buffalo Bill recounting his adventure, so our title isn’t about which side the coin lands on, but what you hope for when it’s spinning in the air.”

John C. Reilly, who brings Buffalo Bill to the screen, also talked about his role: “I was really intimidated by the idea of playing such a legendary character. Honestly, as a kid I didn’t even think he was real, I thought he was imaginary. There’s a lot of humor in how we brought this kind of figure to the screen—someone who exists so much in our collective imagination. It was an amazing experience for me. I love horseback riding, I love westerns, and that set felt perfect for me. And doing it in Italy was surreal. We filmed in so many beautiful places. Talking with the directors, we agreed that Buffalo Bill is a very ambivalent character. On the one hand, he lived through and fought in the Indian Wars; on the other, he told completely fictional stories. His family background was also fascinating: his mother was a suffragette, his father an abolitionist who was killed after giving a speech against slavery. He came from a very intelligent, progressive family, yet he was also a hypocritical figure in many ways. That ambivalence was really interesting. We’re portraying him at the tail end of his career, not his early days as a Pony Express cowboy.”

For Nadia Tereszkiewicz, the film was “an emotional journey, like the one that Rosa goes through. I started out very school-like, I was memorizing all my lines perfectly, but ended up improvising in Italian. Alessandro’s generosity changed everything, even my acting. That’s something really valuable when making a film together. The emotional journey also meant that every day brought the freedom of not knowing exactly what would happen. We were able to embrace whatever came up in the moment, thanks to the directors’ openness.”

Borghi added: “Nadia reminds me so much of myself when I was starting out—she still has that sense of wonder. We really supported each other.”

Heads or Tails? isn’t a nostalgic look at the past, but rather a film attuned to a different time that still lives within us. It’s an example of contemporary Italian auteur cinema capable of questioning its tools and reinventing its myths. As De Righi and Zoppis say, “Working as a duo means constantly exchanging references. That’s a crucial part of our artistic process.”

The film will be soon released in Italy by 01 Distribution.