Paolo Virzì from Livorno, a Roman by adoption, presents his latest film, Drought. A choral film, a collective portrait, that touches us closely revealing a dramatic reality.

The film opens with a Rome where it hasn’t rained for three years, dry, which forces the characters to go desperate in search of a drop of water, defying social rules. A city that induces the authorities to close the taps and ration the water supplies. It is forbidden to buy more than one pack of water at the supermarket and those who decide to wash their car risk stopping. Cockroaches are everywhere, on every corner of the street and because the Tiber river is dry, they approach and enter the apartments looking for water, thus becoming the first tenants inside the houses. Is such a utopian science fiction plot or a possible future reality?

"The first lines of the script were written while we were at home blocked by the lockdown imposed for the pandemic. With the other writers, we wondered about the meaning of our job, so interested in telling what was happening, also in environmental terms, through a metaphorical vision that had been reformulated by Covid. We came up with a vision that could look dystopian and instead we realized, with embarrassment, that we were representing current events" explains Virzì in the meeting.

"This film is the result of collective personal suffering, in fact, in the plot humanity is warned by collectivism. The protagonists represent "the excluded and the disadvantaged" of society, the combination within their lives is often: cruelty and tenderness. It is a film that outlines a great epidemic of narcissism and distrust of others, which is the biggest wound for all of us after the lockdown" adds the director.

The psychological theme is recurrent in the films of Paolo Virzì -in addition to being a great scholar and passionate about the topic- in Drought is embellished by a cast worthy of note. A summary of two years of confinement, the new film tries to measure the psychic health of Italians and the life that has made us shipwrecked, each stranded in his head and in his delirium. To close the ranks, Virzì calls Claudia Pandolfi and Valerio Mastandrea, veterans of social comedy and lysergic incarnations of a malaise that insinuates the film as a virus. Behind them and the spontaneous humor of Orlando and Mastandrea, which helps to relax the atmosphere, live compelling characters and other terrible victims of their ambition and their ignorance.

The film is a real climax ascending, a focus more and more on the condition of each character, getting to the heart of the personal story of each of them. Through the metaphor and the allegory of drought, the viewer awaits the final cathartic moment par excellence, namely the rain. A rain that bathes, purifies, and lifts the heart of those who live in first person the events of the interpreters. On the notes of "Mi sei scoppiato dentro al cuore" (You burst into my heart) by Mina, Virzì leaves us a great point of reflection, about our near future, emphasizing an extremely current topic in our lives.