The Lost Poet

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The Lost Poet (Il poeta perduto)

The Lost Poet (Il poeta perduto)

original title:

Il poeta perduto

directed by:

screenplay:

cinematography:

Arianna Busti

set design:

costume design:

music:

Giancarlo Mici

production:

country:

Italy

year:

2023

film run:

87'

format:

colour

aspect ratio:

16:9

release date:

02/10/2024

Dante Mezzadri wants to see an old friend, nicknamed the Iguana, whom he has lost sight of for many years, and who has managed to turn their common youthful passion for poetry into a job, becoming a famous writer and poet. The man runs away from his bourgeois life and his wife to live without a fixed abode on the Roman coast, prints and tries to sell his poetry collections. At night he sleeps in a park of old allegorical carnival floats, inside a papier-mâché tank, and waits for the opportunity to meet his old friend, who however never shows up for appointments in the places they frequented when they were young, now in ruins . Dante's poetry booklets are of no interest to anyone and in order to support himself he is forced to "change products": he begins to sell the notorious "cannibal's pill" on behalf of young drug dealers, a new drug that sells like hot cakes and which causes sensory and consumerist ecstasy . However, he realizes that this powerful drug is very dangerous for those who take it, comes into conflict with his ethical conscience and throws all the pills into the sea. However, the drug dealers want to get their money back.

DIRECTOR'S NOTES:
Shot over a period of 2 years, the film is a reflection on the cultural and artistic rubble of the society in which the protagonist lives, in an increasingly mechanized, consumerist and arid world. Dante Mezzadri is yet another human being who has renounced his inspiration and his creativity, but unlike many he is not willing to give his life to a system that distances him from his true identity. The physical world around him, however, seems constructed in such a way that it seems impossible to escape from this "invisible cage".
The enthusiasm of the people he meets only ignites when faced with sensory gratification, with unreal visions of personal affirmation and success, with "metaverses" that offer an escape into an illusory and destructive reality. The poet's house on the coast, where he met his friends as a young man, is just a pile of abandoned rubble. What happened to all those who wanted to be poets and I ended up becoming something else? Are there inner forces with which that house can be "rebuilt"?