An enormous birdcage stands in a wooded area. A young woman (Angelique Cavallari) wearing a long, beige coat walks around endlessly while philosophising about the suffering of angels. Then she finds herself in the old centre of L’Aquila, the mediaeval town to the north-east of Rome, which was devastated in the night of 5 April 2009 by an earthquake. Life has still not returned to normal. That much is clear from the impressionist images of the devastation and the statements by twenty ‘doomed people’: ‘This isn’t civilised, it’s hellish’.
Lack-Hell is a theatrical, stylised film by Italian-Dutch director Stefano Odoardi, loosely inspired by The Elegies of Duino by Rainer Maria Rilke: ‘For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.’
With beautifully serene music by Andrea Manzoli, sung by the soprano Valentina Coladonato.
Film details
- Countries of production
- Italy, Netherlands
- Year
- 2014
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2014
- Length
- 71'
- Medium/Format
- DCP
