“To discover Pier Georgio Frassati’s life and spirituality helped me be more prayerful, for example,” director Gurrieri said, “to trust more in God, to be more attentive also to the needs of the people, and also to be more kind. Pier Giorgio was very kind.”
Francesco Buttironi, a 27-year-old Italian actor, played Frassati.
He told EWTN News during production of the film in 2022 that it was challenging to play a Blessed.
“I think the tendency is to go to just abstract stuff,” he said. “Actually, we’re always talking about a human being … so we have a life, we have a body, we have a family, and so I try to stay with that human part.”
“And from the human part … I have been traveling into his soul, into his spiritual behavior and spiritual life,” Buttironi added.
The actor said one particularly touching moment for him during the making of the docudrama was when they were filming a scene of Frassati and his friends praying the rosary in the mountains.
A member of the crew told Buttironi a personal story of something he had experienced once while reciting the rosary.
“And in that moment, in that specific moment while being in the mountains, in these wonderful places [where] we’ve been shooting in Abruzzo,” he said, “thinking about his experience touched me in some way.”
“It was really, really strong, and what was just another scene to shoot at some point became something really powerful, really strong that touched me even personally, I have to say.”
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“To the Top” will premiere on EWTN on June 28 at 10 p.m. ET and re-air on July 1 at 8 p.m. ET.
Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency’s senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.
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