The Levitants

It has been almost thirty years since Filippo Dobrilla started to sculpt a giant male nude inside a cave 650 metres deep in the Apuan Alps. This almost inaccessible place has jealously protected his secret: his youthful passion for a fellow climber, a passion Filippo was only able to indulge in here in the intimacy of this cave. Even after it was over and ever since then, Filippo has been returning regularly to the cave to work on the most important sculpture of his life, a masterpiece no one will see.

Ostia, outskirts of Rome: the beach in winter. Two sixteen-year-old boys steal a scooter at 8 in the morning, then rob a store, all in time for getting to school at 9. Nader is Egyptian, but was born in Rome. Stefano is Italian and his best friend Brigitte, Nader’s girlfriend, is also Italian, but for this very reason Nader’s parents are against the match, and Nader runs away from home. The film describes a week in the life of a teenager who tries to subvert the values of his own family. Torn between his Arab and Italian identity, audacious and in love, like the hero of a contemporary fairy tale, Nader will have to put up with the cold, the loneliness, life on the street, hunger and fear, the flight from his enemies and the loss of his friends, before he can really understand who he is.

In the harsh snowy landscape of the Italian Alps, a young technician arrives to repair an electric power plant of a village plagued by blackouts. There, he encounters a strange disappearance.

Dario, father of a disabled child, begins to receive attention from his brother's teenage son, discovering that he prefers him to his own. In the growing complicity with his nephew he finds the son he would have liked to have, he takes on the role of the father he could have been. An illusory and dangerous role-playing game that will put the entire family at risk.

Through the memory of the marble quarrymen, the inhabitants of the mountains, collectors and family members, the short film explores the mystery of the life and works of the Tuscan artist Filippo Dobrilla.