Over the last 55 years the Italian artist Luigi Lineri has been working continuously on "La Ricerca" (“The Quest”). It's a one-of-a-kind installation made of thousands of stones, carefully ordered and cataloged. Collecting pebbles from the Adige river and the mountains of Lessinia, Luigi translates into a visual poem a profound insight on the human condition. A time travel through art, language, myth, technology and ecology. From primitive flint tools to symbolic sculptures, Luigi portrays the turning points of a collective evolution, investigating the inner world that defines our species and our bond with the ecosystem. Combining creative documentary with experimental cinema, “La Ricerca" is an ode to the human struggle, an empowering tale about the efforts to relentlessly shape the future, from our primitive childhood to the still unwritten history.

Director's notes

I met Luigi Lineri and his artwork for the first time in early 2015. This encounter ignited in me an unprecedented marvel and a long series of questions. A spark that evolved in the development of this film.
Luigi's masterpiece is a formidable tool to investigate universal themes. He has materialized a vast field of anthropological, philosophical and even political topics. Many of these contents are extremely actual and urgent, as for example our conflicting relationship with the ecosystem.
The film structure evolves from these inner elements. Re-contextualized film archives and evocative images and sounds work in an allusive fashion, further exploring the film themes. It's a continue and open dialogue with Luigi and with the audience. "La Ricerca" deals with collective empowerment, reshaping lost memories to build a better future. This "conservation" topic matters also in regards to the survival of the one-of-a-kind art installation created by Luigi Lineri. Given its peculiarities, there is the strong risk is that it will disappear together with its author, now 85 years old. This film is also a legacy of Luigi's life commitment to art, intended as a way of serving the universal human community.
All these motivations supported the long development process of this project, that lasted over 7 years. During this arc of time, many professional embraced this endeavor, in many cases as a passion project, as happened with the world famous musician Nicolás Jaar, composer of the original film score.