Torino, being built along the 45th parallel, exactly halfway between the Northe Pole and the Equator, becomes the poetic symbol of living in balance - which is everybody’s fate today… What happens to the film's characters is an ironical and at the same time passionate comment on the search for happiness that belongs to all human beings in a time of uncertainty.
UGO (Walter Leonardi), 42, has lost his parents when a teenager, inheriting money and a mansion on the hills overlooking the city. He basically watches himself live, careless of everything, except his beloved poet Leopardi, whose sad and melancholic life he mockingly tries to take after. He has recently sublet part of the house. One of his tenants is MARIA (Manuela Parodi), 26, who works in a travel agency. She is a spirited young woman in search of a steady relationship and possibly of a husband. A convinced romantic, her efforts to find a lover are baffled by the cynical word around her. The other tenant is DARIO (Eugenio Franceschini), 21, a university student and part-time keeper in a one of a kind “zoo-cum-spa” on the outskirts of the city.

Director’s statement
We are living in hard times and I believe we all feel like tightrope walkers. Perhaps this metaphor best explains 45th Parallel, a film that seeks to capture the spirit of the times with the firm conviction that it is important to talk about what is happening with lightness. The lightness of someone who walks on a tightrope, as well as the lightness described by Italo Calvino in Six Memos for the Next Millenium. It is also a major investment of trust in the imagination, the only thing that can help us break free of the tyranny of the present to look towards the distant future. Like someone lifting his head to look for the moon in the sky.