13/09/2023 - VENICE 2023: With his first feature, the master of stop motion animation Simone Massi tells with vivid images the archetypal story of three peasant children from the 1920s to the 1980s

The gaze of three children on three different historical moments. Such is the narrative angle chosen by Simone Massi for his first animated feature film, Nowhere [+see also:
trailer
film profile], selected in the Orizzonti section at the 80th Venice Film Festival. Zelinda, Assunta and Icaro transport us respectively to the misery of the 1920s, after WWI, to the horrors of Nazism and Fascism in the countryside of the Umbria-Marche Apennines, and finally to the uncertainty of the years between the 1970s and 1980s, year of political terrorism.

One of the most important authors of animated stop-motion short films with over 200 awards in international and Italian festivals, Massi is known to Lido attendees for creating the official logo of the Venice Film Festival shown at screenings from 2012 to 2016. We remember him most of all for his contribution to Stefano Savona’s documentary Samouni Road [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Stefano Savona
film profile]. The technique that makes Massi’s work so recognisable and unique consists in spreading a layer of oil pastels on paper, then scratching it with drypoints and other etching tools. An identifying touch is the red he uses to colour certain details (such as the headscarf on a woman’s head, for example), a bit like the young girl’s coat in Schindler’s List. The final result (nearly 500 drawings are required for one minute of film, and this one is 90 minutes long) is vivid and pulsating, despite the perpetually dark background.

Massi makes a definitive jump towards a form of storytelling more structured and accomplished, with a screenplay (written with Anne Paschetta, Alessio Torino, Luca Briasco, Julia Gromskaya, Nello Massi, and Assunta Ceccarani) that operates on a scale unseen in his work before, even if the three temporalities, the three stories and the scenes within each story remain similar to short films in themselves (the editing is by the director together with Lola Capote Ortiz and Alberto Girotto). 

His poetic perspective has always connected a greater concreteness, because since his first short films Massi has talked about his ancestors, gone back in time searching for his roots, or simply recalled his own childhood. In that regard, the choices to use the dialect of his native land — the film’s Italian title Invelle which means “nowhere” — and to involve family members and inhabitants of Pergola (in the Marches) for the voices in the film are significant. Next to them, the director has gathered an illustrious cast of cinema and theatre actors: Marco Baliani, Ascanio Celestini (who sings the beautiful song Lettera alla madre from anarchist Sante Caserio), Mimmo Cuticchio, Luigi Lo Cascio (who performs a song from La casa in collina by Cesare Pavese), Neri Marcorè, Giovanna Marini, Toni Servillo (who sings Mezzaluna by Federico Garcia Lorca), and Filippo Timi. This is certainly an added value in a film that must deliver all the dramatic power of the events told, even if they unfold in a place that isn’t very important, a place that is “nowhere.” 

Nowhere is the archetypal story of three children in time who never saw their fathers return from the trenches, who saw poor people suffer the violence of bullies, freedoms give way in the face of abuse, the values of the Resistance betrayed and mocked. Nowhere depicts the painful transition from peasant to industrial civilisation, the escape from the countryside towards a presumed urban wellbeing. It’s on the viewers to put together all the pieces of this mosaic, made up of visual suggestions. 

Nowhere is an Italian-Swiss co-production by Minimum Fax Media in collaboration with RAI Kids, in co-production with Amka Films and RSI. Fandango Sales is handling international sales.

(Translated from Italian)