Una modesta proposta (first feature)

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Una modesta proposta

Una modesta proposta

original title:

Una modesta proposta

directed by:

screenplay:

cinematography:

Gabriele Tiddi

editing:

Pietro Maria Rusca

set design:

Federico Gatti, Lucio Serpagli, Marco Galluzzi

costume design:

music:

Marcello Giordani

production:

country:

Italy

year:

2026

film run:

83'

format:

16mm/DCP - colour

aspect ratio:

4:3

status:

In post-production (25/07/2025)

Claudio is an acclaimed conceptual artist. After years of provocative works, he announces his final performance: he will stop eating until he dies, turning his own disappearance into a work of art.
Together with Anna, his partner and sole witness, he isolates himself in a remote house. Every day is filmed and archived as material for the documentary meant to record the performance.
As the days pass, Claudio’s body begins to deteriorate. The rules of the project slowly shift, and Anna becomes increasingly responsible for keeping the performance alive. What initially appears as an act of devotion gradually turns into a disturbing form of complicity.
When Claudio begins to hesitate, stopping is no longer a simple decision. The performance has taken on a life of its own, transforming the relationship between them into a silent struggle over control, responsibility, and the image they have created together.


DIRECTOR‘ S NOTES:
We live in an era in which experience often seems incomplete until it is recorded. Images no longer simply preserve reality; they compete with it, replace it, consume it. Claudio pushes this logic toward its most extreme consequence. He decides to disappear in front of a video camera, transforming his own body into material, duration, and spectacle. What interested me was never the provocation of the gesture itself, but the moment control begins to fracture.
A performance may start as an act of will, yet once it is transformed into an image, it no longer fully belongs to the person who created it. The presence of the camera changes the nature of every decision. Watching becomes a form of participation.
Inside the house, time gradually loses its stability. The space becomes suspended between intimacy, ritual, and exhibition. The camera observes with restraint while the body slowly deteriorates. I was interested in preserving this tension without resolving it morally.
The film is built around a contradiction: the image seeks permanence, while the body inevitably moves toward disappearance. Between these two forces, the relationship between Claudio and Anna slowly shifts into something increasingly ambiguous.
I wanted the film to remain trapped in that uncertainty — between devotion and control, between witnessing and refusing to intervene.