Nero

Francesca forgot her anti-cellulite cream at her ex-boyfriend Zardo's house. She sends her new boyfnend Sergio to get it for her. When Sergio gets to Zardo's house, he finds Zardo brutally murdered. The police arrives, summoned by suspicious neighbours. Sergio pretends to be Zardo and assures the police that everything is in order. He escapes from the building with Zardo's body in a suitcase.

Comment:
There is a lot that brings cartoons to mind in Nero. This is no coincidence, since I wrote the script together with the cartoonist Tiziano Sclavi. My aim was to make a film in which everything happens in sequences, just like in a cartoon strip. For the same reason, I wanted to create a world completely removed from reality. The streets, for instance, are always empty and there are no things in the film that do not have some relevance to the plot. No pedestrians or any other suggestion of life outside the story. It is also an ”acoustic'' film; the sound comes in as if in balloons.
The whole movie has been filmed in Milan, since that city was best suited to represent the world we wanted to portray. I wanted to make a ''film noir'' in a big city environment, hostile, full of anguish but at the same time very Italian, with places and
faces that people would recognize. Milan was the only alternative. It is somewhere in between the traditional image of the violent city environment we are presented with in American and European film and the environment we have outside our own front door. It was just the right framework for the distorted reality the film wants to portray. The imaginary setting combined with well-known elements, make it easy for people to imagine that this could happen
to them ..
Water is an important part of the film. I wanted it to feel like the city was surrounded by water. The characters in the film are near water as soon as they go from one place to another; the Navigli canals, all the dripping faucets and showers and the streets wet with rain. Water is an unstable, illusory element, just like the story itself. It can take place during two days or just one second - depending on how you interpret the ending.
Giancarlo Soldi