Pietro Turano

Millennials experience first love and discover their emerging identities in this teen drama told partly through texts, chats and social media posts.

Basement Café is an innovative project created by Lavazza in collaboration with Esse Magazine, a multimedia platform for the world of Italian rap. “Basement Café” wants to be a place where today's generations can discuss contemporary cultural issues.

In a peripheral and unprecedented Milan, a place frequented by the queer community is in danger of closing due to economic problems. The lives of Luz, Tim, Rose and Zhang, who all circle around the Love Club, touch on a path that will make them face their greatest fears. Will Luz be able to live the story with Roberta without the fear of losing her independence?

Gioia has just turned 18. She lives with her father Bruno in a small country village where she works as a shepherdess. They live very simply yet harmoniously with the villagers. Their lives are disrupted when Bruno gives in once again and once too many to his gambling addiction, in spite of his efforts to quit. Gioia will have to follow him to a faraway town, where he will be treated in a specialized center. This will radically change her existence, forcing her to abandon the safety of the village, her friends and her habits. She will be all by herself to support her father, in his journey for a better life.

In a dystopian future in which emotions and bodies are regulated by an authoritarian system, an application picks Didi and Ermes to celebrate a mating rite in a nightclub, a place that is now exclusively dedicated to the reproduction of the species. Sylvester, queen / tyrant of the club and some other grotesque beings that inhabit the club lead Didi and Ermes into this rite.

Is there an alternative to the choices that lead each of us towards a destiny that is already written? Or is destiny only what we have decided for our end? In the words of a poem by Charles Bukowsky (Class), this is the story of that instant, a single moment, in which an intelligent thought gives life to an "absolute truth", that very truth that makes us free individuals capable of defeating death of thought and personal annihilation.