Lucia owns a family olive grove together with her brother Donato, but her trees have stopped producing as they once did because of a parasite that caused most of the trees to dry out. In a difficult process of acceptance, Lucia embarks on a journey between present and past where her identity as a human being is at stake.
International Title The Heavens Year of production 2020 Length 12min Country Italy Shooting Format 16mm Aspect Ratio 1.85:1 Dialogue Italian Director Manuel Marini Production Apulia Film Commission Executive Production Sinossi Film Producer Pietro Manigrasso, Manuel Marini, Edoardo Carlo Bolli, Paolo Tepatti, Ivan Brienza, Augusto Pelliccia Writer Manuel Marini, Paolo Tepatti Art Director Paolo Tepatti Cinematographer Edoardo Carlo Bolli Editor Manuel Marini Sound Mixage Daniele Mariani Sound Recorder Ivano Staffieri Make Up Gaia Santoro Music Marco De Pascale CastCeleste Casciaro, Salvatore Della Villa, Anna Boccadamo, Arcangela Maria Winspeare
This projects is cofounded by the European Regional Development Fund under Interreg V-A Greece-Italy Programme 2014/2020
Director's Statement Li Paradisi explores the dramatic “Xylella” issue, a bacterium that has affected millions of “evergreen” trees in the Salento area, causing massive explants of trees. The short film tells a story that wants express itself through images, presenting both realistically and symbolically the intertwined existences of human beings and nature, an immersion into a world that feed the emotions of the characters, using the ambient to mirror the conflicts of the souls. There is a more complex truth to what actors are actually seeing through their eyes, as there is a more complex reality to what simply appears on the images that lights up the screen. “I now live in things my eyes look at. I become an olive tree, wheel of a slow cart…”
