Tirrenica

2025 | Italy | Rosario Minervini | Documentary | In development

The Piranesi Experience, Belino Productions, Limbo Film |

The highway bridges stretching from Salerno to Reggio Calabria cut through the sky; the sound of speeding cars draws us ever closer to a hidden world, tucked away from the gaze of passersby—a world that rushes along the guardrails, silent in its solitude, unseen.

For twenty-five years, Antonella has paved miles atop these overpasses with her road giant. Nicknamed "The Little Mermaid" for her love of the Disney film, which she painted on the side of her truck, Antonella is as free as her land. Inside her cab, it feels like a thousand voices fill the space—because, in a way, they do. She is always live, singing at the top of her lungs or entertaining her followers.

Francesca, too, has a voice. Despite her delicate appearance, she shouts to change the world, demanding equal rights in a land often deaf to the present, reluctant to embrace modernity. She drives miles at her own expense for her association, offering support to women victims of violence, to students, and to all those who struggle to find their own voice.

In the silence of his own world, Pasquale, now elderly, tries to fill a void that not even the affection of his loved ones can satisfy. Every day, he collects discarded objects from the streets, repairs them, cares for them, catalogs them—an attempt to soothe an ancient, unresolved hunger. Deaf to his wife's pleas, he finds solace in his quiet universe.

Mariagrazia, too, finds comfort—through target shooting. She trains daily to improve, to give meaning to her passion. Her battle is waged against the struggles of life: hypothyroidism, which led to obesity, job insecurity, and the effects of the pandemic, which pushed her to find an escape, to feel alive in a country that has offered her little hope or opportunity.

The future remains uncertain for Roberto, a ten-year-old boy living a life from another time. After school, he trains hunting dogs, runs with them, lives with them—far from the screens of modernity, in a world where past and present intertwine.

And the past itself will play a crucial role in this story. The archive will be both voice and narrator, a vessel of identity and culture, revealing the paths, faces, and voices of those who inhabit this land. Those merely passing through may admire its landscapes—lakes, mountains, valleys, and rivers—but will never imagine the stories hidden within.

Stories like that of Mitic, who, after twelve years here, finds himself in a limbo—neither a stranger nor truly at home. The pandemic took his job, forcing him to become a shepherd. Every night, as cars speed by with their headlights piercing the darkness, he tends to another man's sheep, sleeping in a trailer without water or electricity, seeking warmth in a dirty blanket while the February wind howls outside, far from his children.

Here, the world depends on the eyes that perceive it. This is a place that expands, a place that has waited for decades to reconnect with the present—now bearing witness to a legacy, to a society that no longer exists, its shadows lingering silently along the path of the E45.