Drama, comedy, thriller, by Fabio Del Greco, Italy, 2021.
Lino Stella takes a period of vacation from his alienating job to devote himself to relaxation and his passion: drawing comics. But he did not foresee certain disturbing elements: the intrusive administrator of the building where he lives, the postman who delivers crazy fines and tax bills, an overbearing security guard, a very enterprising real estate agent, the old lady downstairs who raises the feline colony of the condominium. These characters will make his vacation hell.

With a radically independent approach, Fabio Del Greco crafts a grotesque and unsettling story that shifts from everyday realism into a Kafkaesque nightmare, blending film noir atmospheres, sudden outbursts of violence and situations bordering on the surreal. Super 8 footage becomes the thread leading back to happier memories of the past, while the sequences set in the depths of the sea evoke a place of tranquillity, far removed from the noise and conflicts of the world. Against the backdrop of the Ostia coastline, the film revisits some of the central themes of Del Greco’s cinema: the invasion of privacy, urban alienation, isolation and the pettiness of human relationships. The protagonist’s comic books, with their dark imagery, gradually blur into reality, becoming a way of interpreting an increasingly hostile and suffocating society.

LANGUAGE: Italian
SUBTITLES: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese