Land Wind

Colour, 35 mm
Italy, 2004, 90 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

Italian director Vincenzo Marra’s work to date owes a debt to his neorealist predecessors. He generally chooses a social issue and treats it realistically, often using nonactors. In Land Wind he explores the dismal situation faced by a Neapolitan labouring family. Mom stays at home stooped over a sewing machine, son Vincenzo has a job at a workshop, dad is disabled, and the daughter looks in vain for work. They live in a ramshackle housing complex but the owner of the building wants them to move out. Matters are made all that much worse when the dad dies. Vincenzo has no choice but to enlist, but can’t imagine anything good coming of it.  The filmmakers concentrate on exploring the monotonous life of a young man who subordinates his interests to the needs of his loved ones. He seems uprooted, almost friendless and apparently without emotional relationships. The narration’s slow pace evokes a sense of desperation, but one which the protagonist, played by nonactor Vincenzo Pacilli, surprisingly manages to resist.

About the director

Vincenzo Marra (b. 1972, Naples) graduated in law from the University of Rome and specialized in human rights in Argentina (cases of Italians who disappeared under the military junta) and in Northern Ireland. Since his youth he also worked as a photojournalist in sports. In 1994 he taught screenwriting in Palestine. In 1998 he shot his first short film Una rosa prego. His feature debut, Sailing Home (Tornando a casa, 2001), set in the world of Neapolitan fishermen, won several secondary awards at the 2001 Venice IFF and was screened at Karlovy Vary in 2002. His second feature, Land Wind (Vento di terra, 2004), took the FIPRESCI Prize and others at Venice in 2004. The writer-director also made the short documentary La vestizione (1998), a feature-length documentary about Neapolitan football fans, Estranei alla massa (2001) and the documentary Paesaggio a Sud (2003).