An elderly puppeteer walks through a forest, bringing logs and roots to life. In the quiet of his workshop, he sketches a self-portrait. A mysterious figure with the high-pitched voice of a chick observes the streets of Naples.
At Casa Guarattelle, a small theater in the heart of the city, these fragments come together: the man is Bruno Leone, master puppeteer; the gaze and voice belong to Pulcinella, archetype of resistance and freedom, symbol of an authentic and popular Naples, indomitable soul of puppet theater.
From this moment on, Bruno and Pulcinella engage in an intimate dialogue between man and mask, between the passing of time and the stubborn vitality of popular art. Their universe, the universe of puppets, is a space in which to imagine a different future, an ideal place in which to oppose the idea that ‘there is no alternative’.
Pulcinella moves independently through the alleys and woods, between city and countryside. He is independent of his puppeteer, crossing the boundaries between reality and imagination, breaking the fourth wall by breaking down and rebuilding the boundaries between theater and life. Freed from the spatial limitations of the theater, Pulcinella's gaze opens onto the city of Naples, which becomes a universal stage, transforming itself into an essential, powerful, and evocative act of protest. The puppet is both body and root, spirit of the earth and comic mask, fighting against Death, challenging the authorities with humor and irreverence, dancing with his beloved, dreaming of revolution.
Bruno gives him a voice and, in turn, is animated by him. Since the 1970s, thanks to Pulcinella, he has traveled the world bringing the theater of guarattelle, an ancient and marginal art, which he has interpreted in an original and militant way. Through the body and voice of Bruno and the other puppeteers who take up his mantle, the tradition is renewed and transformed into a promise of change.
Pulcinella's Utopia is a poetic and political film, against war and cultural homogenization. But it is also an act of love towards those artists who, with the lightness of a fairy tale, create a pocket of resistance where a different world becomes possible.