Antonio De Rosa

Five soldiers and their punishment.

Roberto is a doctor in a small town near Naples. He suffers from a severe heart disease and he is heading toward an American hospital for a dangerous surgery with little or no hope of surviving. Therefore he talks to his best friend since childhood, Michele, a columnist at the local newspaper, explaining his last and long-wanted desire: having sex once with his Swedish beautiful wife, Frida.

In a coastal village obsessed with standing out, through flashy solos, fierce ping pong matches, and clumsy dates, a young saxophonist takes a different path.

Fabrizio is unable to explain his impotence (which occurs only with his girlfriend). One evening he stares in the mirror and, after some hesitation, shaves, sacrificing a thick and characteristic beard goatee, typical of those years. Here begins, with a simple gesture that we could define as 'unconventional', the transformation of Fabrizio. Immediately a vital impulse emerges in Fabrizio that leads him to 'want more' from a life enclosed in watertight compartments and protocol rules. The viewer is an accomplice and faithful travel companion in his process of metamorphosis, who is not asked for a judgment or an opinion, but a simple understanding and vision of history, as it is, without prejudice.

Three stories revolving around 3 elements: the painting, the sofa and the comet. The 3 chapters that compose it are also linked together by these elements that give the entire film a circular structure, just like the sad fate of Sisyphus who was condemned to push a huge stone to the top of a hill.

Nine actors and their driver are taken hostage during a theatrical tour organized for Italian soldiers in countries striven by war. The kidnap has a political motive and soon turns into a reality show without the hostages knowledge. The terrorist are sending a live feed to an Italian TV station which gets broadcast 24 hrs a day, in exchange for proceeds from advertising sales. The hostages are completely isolated, surrounded by woods, by the silence and suddenly find themselves struggling with the violence of the kidnappers, their precarious hygienic conditions and with themselves.

The match almost suspended time, the whole city held its breath and stared wide-eyed, but life cannot be stopped, even for just ninety minutes. The protagonists of these stories know this well.