Lost and Beautiful

Director: Pietro Marcello

2015 / 87min / DCP

A fabulist folklore-flavored docufiction whose soft, fresco-like colors can be attributed to its having been shot on expired 16mm stock, Lost and Beautiful sets its scene in Southern Italy’s Campania region, its subject a shepherd, Tommaso, who braves mafia threats in his role as caretaker for the abandoned Bourbon palace of Carditello. When Tommaso suffered a fatal heart attack in the course of the shoot, Marcello crafted a scene in response to his lead’s last wishes, in which a commedia dell’arte Pulcinella appears to retrieve a buffalo calf from the palace. An elegiac and unclassifiable film that offers a generous, lyric response to real-life tragedy.