La bocca del lupo

Synopsis

A man returns home after a long absence. He gets off a train in a gloomy port and crosses the city in search of places from the past. His life partner, Mary, is waiting for him in a modest apartment. Their love story began in prison and now resumes its course in the port neighbourhood of Genoa, untouched by modern times.

Pietro Marcello's second film blends two tales of decline: a portrait of the city of Genoa and a love story. Ruins of a bygone world are presented through archive home movie footage and copies of letters exchanged by the couple, giving the film an almost mythical dimension with echoes of Pasolini.

Biography and Films

Pietro Marcello (Caserta, Italy, 1976) studied art history and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples. Between 2003 and 2005, he directed several documentaries. He made his debut in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival with his first feature-length documentary, Il passagio della linea (2007). With La bocca del lupo (2009), considered the best documentary of the year in Italy, he received awards at the Turin Film Festival and BAFICI.

After Il silenzio di Pelesjan (2011), a tribute to the Armenian film director, he transitioned to fiction with Bella e perduta (2015), which won the Special Jury Prize at Locarno. His next work, Martin Eden (2019), an adaptation of Jack London's novel, won much greater international recognition, sweeping the European Film Awards (Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay) and receiving, among other awards, Best Film at the Seville European Film Festival and Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival. In 2021 he returned to documentary filmmaking with two films, Per Lucio, paying tribute to musician Lucio Dalla, and Futura, codirected with Francesco Munzi and Alice Rohrwacher, offering a portrait of young Italians. He returned to fiction with Scarlett (2022), which opened the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Best Director award at Seville.