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Altea's rooms
If the next lockdown were endless, how long would you last under the same roof?

DESCRIPTION

  • TITLE: THE ROOMS OF ALTEA
  • GENRE: DRAMA
  • YEAR OF PRODUCTION: 2022
  • DIRECTION, SCREENPLAY AND VIDEO-EDITING: Sara Reginella
  • CAMERA OPERATOR: HENRY SECCHIAROLI
  • SOUND RECORDIST:MICHELE CONTI
  • MUSIC: ALESSANDRO PETRILLO - SNOWDONIA
  • DISTRIBUTION: -

SYNOPSIS

Following the activation of emergency health protocols for the management of a pandemic, Altea, a 25-year-old young woman, remains isolated in her home for an interminable period of time.
Alone and in contact with her mother via a smartphone, in a dimension beyond space and time, she seeks escape from her psychic disease and from the relationship with her omnipresent mother, who controls her every movement.

Altea thus comes into contact with an online para-religious spiritual group that promises experiences of healing and purification by means of rituals that will lead to an ever greater loss of contact with reality. A series of situations will transform her existence in an unpredictable and dramatic way and lead to an unexpected chance for escape from the virtual world to the unveiling of new possible horizons.

The Covid-19 lockdown has been experienced by millions of people around the world in recent months. It has caused serious consequences on mental health. In this scenario, the aim of “Altea’s rooms" is to enter the inner depth and the experience of the protagonist, a psychologically vulnerable young woman who lived in isolation throughout lockdown, in the painful darkness of her home, just like many other people.

DIRECTOR’S NOTES 

The protagonist's psychic disease is narrated through a visual style aimed at creating continuity between spaces and characters.
The protagonist's body is imprisoned inside rooms where the furniture is covered with plastic sheets: a disinfestation of woodworm, which is infesting her house like a virus, is underway.

The alternation between the psychic rigidity of the protagonist, who seeks emotional containment in a para-religious group, and the progressive surfacing of a psychotic process that will lead her to a final crisis, is visually expressed by the switch from fixed shots to feverish handheld camera movements. The latter provide sudden dizzying glimpses of the house that anticipate the need for escape that will reach its maximum expression in the epilogue.
At the same time, the faces imprisoned in grids that simulate the interfaces of video-calls on smartphones, evoke rigid inner cages that multiply right up to the laceration of the final scenes.

Le Stanze di Altea - The Rooms of Altea - Cortometraggio di Sara Reginella

SCREENINGS