Il Dono

Director: Michelangelo Frammartino

2003 / 80min / DCP

Director Frammartino’s hometown in rural Calabria—Caulonia, later the scene of his Le Quattro volte—is the subject of his newly restored, remarkable feature debut, a work of lyrical ethnography that fixes a patiently observant lens on the few hundred residents who’ve remained in place while their city’s population has steadily plummeted from a mid-20th century high of 15,000. A film attuned to the leisurely rhythms of a virtually pre-industrial way of life as lived against an impassive backdrop of brutal splendor, made with a sly absurdist wit and a rare sense for the melancholy poetry of incremental daily decline.

Distributor: Kino Lorber