Film · 2017

La ragazza nella nebbia

Avechot is nowhere on the map. We built it in miniature at Creation Art.

Act one

A village no one
can escape from.

"I wanted a place the characters couldn't escape from, but where the viewer too would remain trapped."

— Donato Carrisi
interview with Turismo.it, 2017.

When Donato Carrisi — already a bestselling novelist — decided to step behind the camera, he had a precise problem: his village did not exist. Avechot is a narrative invention, a small Alpine valley closed off by peaks, where a sixteen-year-old girl disappears. The real locations chosen between Nova Levante, Lake Carezza and Val Pusteria were not enough: he needed a single panoramic view of the village, a total image that no real settlement could provide. The solution — already adopted by production designer Tonino Zera — was a large model built in our workshop.

Aerial view of the finished model: the village of Avechot in miniature, snow-capped mountains, houses with red and yellow roofs, Gothic bell tower — Avechot, seen from above

Detail of the model: the central square with Gothic bell tower, fountain, houses with red roofs — The square, in miniature

Only the mountains of the model: rocky relief sculpted and patinated with snow white, inside the workshop — The peaks, hand-sculpted

Act two

The model is the
school of the plasterers.

The cinematic scale model is one of the oldest exercises in scenography: hand-shaping an entire world at reduced scale so the camera can fly over it. It is exactly the school Ivano Ferrario comes from — that of the Cinecittà plasterers, where he started in 1981 as a workshop apprentice.

In our Creation Art workshops the village of Avechot took shape in a few weeks, between early and late April 2017: first the rocky reliefs, cut and sculpted in expanded polystyrene, then coated with plasters and mortars to mimic living stone. Then the houses, one by one, sculpted to size and painted with the palette Zera wanted — brick reds, ochre yellows, cream. Finally the Gothic bell tower, the fir trees worked leaf by leaf, the balustrades of the square. A miniature town ready to be filmed from the air and then drowned, in post-production, under the fog that gives the film its title.

Early phase of the model: the mountainous reliefs just sculpted in white expanded polystyrene, first coloured houses laid — The model under construction, 5 April 2017

Manual shaping of a portion of the model: rocky relief worked stroke by stroke on the polystyrene — The sculpting, one flake at a time

Detail of the houses painted one by one with the palette of reds, yellows and creams chosen by the production designer — The houses of Avechot, one by one

Behind the scenes

A world in three weeks,
under the lights of a workshop.

Building a miniature village means deciding everything from the scale down: how tall is a balcony compared to a person seen from a plane, what colour the bell tower roof should be, how many visible houses make up the historic centre. Carrisi and Zera arrived at our workshop with orthophotos of the Italian Alps and a palette already chosen. Three weeks later, the model was ready to be filmed from above in studio — diffused light, scene smoke to mimic fog, the engine of the aerial camera rig overhead.

Overall view of the finished model: the village of Avechot tucked between snow-capped mountains, Gothic bell tower at the centre, sculpted firs — Avechot completed. Creation Art workshop, late April 2017.

Polystyrene + plaster

The structure of the model starts from blocks of expanded polystyrene cut into rocky volumes, then coated with plasters and technical mortars to mimic the hardness of living stone. On top, a layered pictorial patina — applied with sponge and tear-off technique — reproduces the variety of tones on the side of an Alpine mountain. Under the studio spotlights, from forty centimetres of height, it looks like a real flank of the Catinaccio.

The houses, one by one

Every house of Avechot was sculpted to size in our workshop: the Gothic bell tower, the bourgeois townhouses with red roofs, the working-class cottages with cream gables. No prefabricated modules. The palette — brick reds, ochre yellows, cream — is the one Zera asked for, a reference to the South Tyrol villages where the film was shot live. The miniature village had to "lock in" perfectly with the live-action footage.

The fog is everything

The film is titled "The Girl in the Fog": atmosphere is central. On the model the fog is not there at shooting stage — it is added in post-production or created on set with scene smoke. The model paradoxically serves to "be able to lose" the village under the fog: to give the director the freedom to make it appear and disappear at will. Without the model, you cannot do it.

3 weeks of workshop · April 2017

4 David di Donatello 2018 nominations · 1 won (Carrisi, new director)

€3.7M Italian box office · top Italian film of the release weekend

The model's mountains in full production — **The mountains, in progress.** The valley side shaped in expanded polystyrene and coated with plaster.

The village taking shape: houses already laid, mountains still rough — **The village fills out.** The first houses laid on the base of the model, waiting for the bell tower.

Street-level view of the finished model — **Avechot, from street level.** When you bend down to the camera's height, it looks like a real village.

Panoramic frontage of the miniature village of Avechot: houses lined along a riverbank with bourgeois townhouses and bell tower in the background — The village frontage, ready for the aerial shots.

The Girl in the Fog: a girl seen from behind walks through a dark fir forest crossed by a beam of light. The iconic image of the film. — The girl in the woods, on screen

Panoramic view of the finished Avechot model — snow-capped mountains, houses with red roofs, bell tower, firs sculpted one by one. — The same village, in miniature

Toni Servillo as agent Vogel, standing at the centre of a room interrogated by a focused LED light beam. — Agent Vogel, interrogation scene

The village of Avechot is pure charm, welcoming and yet fairy-tale.

Donato Carrisi Turismo.it · 2017

Tech sheet

Three weeks of workshop

The Avechot model was built in our Creation Art workshop between the beginning and end of April 2017, shortly before principal photography in South Tyrol. The photos in our archive are dated day by day: 5 April (rocky reliefs just shaped), 18 April (village completed). Three weeks to build an entire village, only to reduce it to fog.

Four nominations, one David

At the 2018 David di Donatello the film received four nominations: new director, best screenplay, best production design (Tonino Zera), best editing. Donato Carrisi won as Best New Director — the award was handed to him on stage by Steven Spielberg, guest of honour at the ceremony. It is the most important recognition for an Italian debut of the year.

A debut already authorial

Donato Carrisi was no unknown: he was already an international bestseller with the eponymous novel, translated into more than twenty languages. For the film he chose a top-tier cast — Toni Servillo, Jean Reno, Alessio Boni, Lorenzo Richelmy, Galatea Ranzi, Greta Scacchi — and directed in a mature noir language, explicitly referencing The Silence of the Lambs, Seven, and the Italian cinema of the 1960s and 70s by Gian Maria Volonté.

Three point seven million at the cinema

Distributed by Medusa Film on around 400 prints, "The Girl in the Fog" was released on 26 October 2017 after its premiere at the Rome Film Fest. In its first two weeks it grossed 3.7 million euros at the Italian box office, the third most-watched film of the opening weekend and the first among Italian productions. Carrisi continued in 2019 with Into the Labyrinth — same noir, same technical crew, Dustin Hoffman in the cast.

All production data

Type: Feature film · noir thriller
Director and screenwriter: Donato Carrisi (debut)
Based on: Eponymous novel by Donato Carrisi (Longanesi, 2015)
Production designer: Tonino Zera
Director of photography: Federico Masiero
Main cast: Toni Servillo · Jean Reno · Alessio Boni · Lorenzo Richelmy · Galatea Ranzi · Greta Scacchi
Production: Colorado Film · Medusa Film · Rai Cinema · Sky Cinema · StudioCanal (IT/FR co-production)
Distribution: Medusa Film (Italy)
Premiere: 25 October 2017 · Rome Film Fest
Release: 26 October 2017 (Italy)
Running time: 128 minutes
Live locations: Nova Levante · Carezza al Lago (Grand Hotel Carezza) · Val Pusteria · Vipiteno · Bressanone · Magrè · Sciliar · Catinaccio
Our role: Construction of the scenographic model/diorama of the fictional village of Avechot — rocky reliefs in expanded polystyrene and plaster, hand-modelled and hand-painted houses, Gothic bell tower, firs, balustrades. Model built to be filmed from above and drowned in post-production under the fog.
Awards: David di Donatello 2018 · Best New Director (Donato Carrisi, presented by Steven Spielberg). 4 total David nominations. Production design nomination for Tonino Zera.
Sequel: Into the Labyrinth (2019), Carrisi's second film · Dustin Hoffman in the cast
Second life: The Avechot model was dismantled after shooting · the technique of the scenographic diorama filmed from above entered our repertoire for other films and series with aerial scenes

Second life

A diorama
aged under the fog.

The Girl in the Fog came out in 2017 and is the cinematic debut of Donato Carrisi, a novelist of great international success. The film won the 2018 David di Donatello for best new director — the award handed over by Steven Spielberg — and received four total nominations, including production design for Tonino Zera. Our contribution: the scenographic model/diorama of the fictional village of Avechot, filmed from above and drowned in post-production under the fog that gives the film its title.

The model was dismantled after the shoot, but the technique of the diorama for aerial camera — rocky reliefs in expanded polystyrene and plaster, hand-modelled cottages with Gothic bell tower, fir trees, balustrades — entered our repertoire for other film and television projects requiring aerial framings of fictional landscapes. It is a rare scenographic exercise: the enlarged miniature, rather than the 1:1 object.

For us it was also the occasion for an ongoing dialogue with Carrisi: his second film Into the Labyrinth was released in 2019 with Dustin Hoffman in the cast.