Director Rosario Minervini has completed his first feature, a documentary entitled Tirrenica. Blending observational sequences with archive material provided by Istituto Luce and AAMOD, the film pieces together a vivid mosaic of out-of-the-ordinary characters living on the edges of the Salerno–Reggio Calabria motorway. Cineuropa first came across the project in 2022, on the occasion of its presentation at the Evia event organised by Salonicco when it was still in development.

According to the synopsis, “The motorway bridges cut across the sky, and the sound of cars draws us towards a hidden world”. “Beneath the flyovers and either side of the crash barriers, an ancient world survives, alone.”

Mythic lost his job after twelve years and became a shepherd, now living in a caravan without water or electricity. Elderly Pasquale collects and repairs abandoned objects, trying to fill a void. Mariagrazia does target practice every day in order to lend meaning to her passion in a place which offers little hope. Francesca fights for everyone’s rights in a land that’s often resistant to change. Ten-year-old Roberto lives like a child from another time: he trains hunting dogs and takes them to the fields, far from any kind of screen, while Antonella is a lorry driver and an unconventional free spirit.

Minervini, who’s currently in charge of the Giffoni Film Festival’s documentary section, has worked as a film director and director of photography on various projects, including Waves in Nature which was presented in Manifesta 12 Palermo and dedicated to the memory of Valentina Pedicini, with whom he collaborated on Where Shadows Fall [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Valentina Pedicini
fiche film]. In 2021, he graduated from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, overseeing cinematography for Castrense Scaturro’s medium-length movie Fantasia a quattro mani, which was presented in the International Documentary Festival - Visioni dal Mondo. His short film, La verità è latitante, was selected for the same event and also circulated in a number of international festivals, claiming prizes and special mentions along the way.

“I grew up in Salerno, where I lived until adulthood. My father comes from Catanzaro and that motorway has been a nightmare for me ever since I was a child”, Minervini explains. “I remember the endless summer tailbacks once you’d passed the imaginary line between my hometown and the rest of the south, between the accessible and the unknown, the traffic, the horns, the vomit from car sickness, the dismembered roads, all to get to Lagonegro and observe from afar the foundations of a seemingly impossible place, with the Mediterranean stretching out to my right and the ever-fading sun. This film was born out of the need to talk about the regions close to my heart, to strip away the veneer created by mass culture and to recreate chapters based on everyday lives. It’s divided into chapters, in line with the kilometres covered along the motorway, and focused on single lives where the past and the present collide with the stillness of time and the chaotic flux of life”.

“We started working on the project in February 2022 by funding an initial scouting phase,” stated producer Claudio Esposito. “Thanks to support from MEDIA and Piano Cinema, we continued working on the project with a limited team throughout 2023 and 2024, guaranteeing this team the flexibility needed for an observational documentary. The real challenge in production terms was balancing creative freedom and financial sustainability.”

Tirrenica was produced by Esposito on behalf of The Piranesi Experience (Italy) and by Antonello Novellino and Maribel Ruiz Pascual for Belino Production (Spain), alongside associate producer Stefano Chiavarini for Limbo (Italy). The film was made with the support of Creative MEDIA Europe, the Campania Region Cinema Plan and the Italian Ministry of Culture’s Cinema Department. The main collaborators on the film include musician Tonino Carotone, editor Elisabetta Abrami and sound designer Pablo Isola.

The film awaits its debut as a world premiere.