STING LIKE A BEE

Italy | 2023 | 83 min

Conceived as a visual research project, even before being a documentary Sting Like A Bee is a journey whose main goal is to give voice to the communities of teenagers that populate often unknown situations, such as small villages in Central and Southern Italy. The spotlight is on a group of girls and boys who share a passion for Piaggio Ape (Italian for bee) motor vehicles. In his film, Leone Balduzzi combines reality and fiction, with the desire of accompanying his teenage heroes and heroines in their quest for a place in the world along the roads of a marginal Italy which rarely makes the headlines. With the excuse of a casting that becomes the very subject of the documentary, the kids become actors in the film of their lives, and a new possibility of collective accomplishment emerges where perspectives are apparently precluded. Dreaming of an unexpectedly cool, deeply free Fast & Furious remake, driving gawdy three-wheeled vehicles. (a.s.)