QUI È ALTROVE

Italy | 2024 | 70 min | bw/col.

The Compagnia della Fortezza, founded by stage director Armando Punzo, is composed of the convicts-actors who every summer present the artistic research they conduct in the prison of Volterra, Tuscany. From this experience, in 2018, stemmed an umbrella-project within which fifteen theatre companies operating in as many Italian penitentiaries work.

During the summer of 2023, film director Gianfranco Pannone and his crew followed the work of Punzo and his actors up to the debut show. At the same time, he filmed the meetings during the masterclasses curated by stage directors coming from various experiences of prison-theatre conducted in Italy. By way of theatre, Qui è altrove tries to question the prison taboo. Through controlled observation, the film director creates a work that reconstructs a collective and dynamic experience in which stage art and representation become an instrument to imagine a possible utopia. (a.d.)