Molecules / Molecole

Between February and April 2020, Andrea Segre, who lives in Rome for several years, got stuck in Venice during the lockdown: Venice, hometown of his father and just partially his own.
He was working on two theatre and movie projects about the wounds of the city: tourism and high water.

During the filming, the virus froze and emptied out the city before his eyes and  gave back the town to its own nature, history and somehow, also to Andrea. He collected visual notes, stories and spent times in his family house where he got the chance to dig in the childhood memories that dragged him deeper down more than he could’ve ever imagine.

Ulderico, father of the director, personal archives on super8 are alternated with encounters with Venice residents, both telling the relationship between the city and the waters and at the same time living the unexpected void that took over Venice and a big part of the world.

The images are held together by the director’s out-of-field voice, the music by Teho Teardo and an atmosphere of expectation and amazement, which pervades all the visual and existential material of this strange journey, unreal (in the sense of fantastic) and unrealizable but still remaining in the heart of a very real and historical event, which has marked and will mark the world forever.