In Sicily, water disappears without a sound. Lakes retreat, dams crack, fields split open. But this is not just a local emergency — it’s the visible face of a Mediterranean that is drying out. What unfolds in Sicily today, with dramatic clarity, mirrors what is happening in many parts of the Global South, where climate change collides with fragile infrastructures, political inertia, and outdated development models.
Dry Sicily tells this story by travelling across the island’s main reservoirs, weaving together the natural geography of the territory with the voices of those who face water scarcity every day: farmers, entrepreneurs, regional officials, families, technicians, activists. The images show drained basins, scorched land, silences heavy with tension. But the film goes further: it questions the island’s water history and probes long-standing responsibilities.
Drought is not new. It is the outcome of layered structural causes. It’s not just a matter of missing rainfall, but of rising temperatures, accelerated evaporation, and disrupted seasons. Added to this are poor political choices, neglected infrastructures, and an aging water system that loses over 50% of the water before it reaches homes and fields. No single voice explains everything — but all of them, together, open up the question. The film is built through fragments that fit together: testimonies, details, absences. The camera doesn’t invade — it observes. It lingers on gestures, gaps, the lines left by receding shorelines. The landscape becomes a character, and silence a language. The images don’t just illustrate — they evoke, telling the slow story of a collective crisis.
Sicily has historically learned to live with water scarcity. But today it stands at the centre of a deep transformation. The desert is advancing, rainfall has decreased by over 40% since 2003, and in 2021 the island recorded Europe’s highest temperature: 48.8°C. According to Italy’s National Association of Agricultural Water Boards, potable water reservoirs were at just 10% of capacity in March 2024. Since September 2023, Sicily has lost over 315 million cubic meters of water — a 64% drop. A crisis without precedent in recent history.
Dry Sicily is a film about thirst — physical, material, systemic — but also about waiting, transformation, and vulnerability. A documentary that speaks about Sicily, but reaches the entire Mediterranean. And all of us.

Director's Satement

Dry Sicily was born out of urgency. The urgency to tell a story that in Sicily is visible to the naked eye, but too often remains out of focus in public discourse. Together with Nunzio Gringeri, we travelled the island from west to east, visiting some of its most important reservoirs. At every stop, we encountered faces, collected stories, and witnessed landscapes in transformation.
From the beginning, our approach was one of listening. We didn’t want to build a didactic or argumentative film, but to create space for reality. We moved between the poles of civil narrative and contemplative gaze. The images are there to give shape to what words often fail to express: the distance between a full dam and an empty one, the muddy line left behind when the water vanishes, the slow time between two rainless seasons.
We were inspired by two different, but deeply related, ways of making cinema: one that explores reality through close observation, and another that gives voice to those often left on the margins, blending testimony and political insight. Dry Sicily moves between these two paths, searching for its own form — rooted in the present, yet open to complexity.
What we portray is not just a climate problem. It is also about infrastructure, memory, failed political choices, and abandonment. It’s a story about Sicily, of course — but also about the Mediterranean. And perhaps, about much more beyond that.