Basilicata Coast To Coast

Four musicians decide to cross Basilicata on foot: from the Tyrrhenian to the Ionian sea, fifteen days, a donkey and a mule. The point is to reach a theatre festival in Scanzano Jonico. A journalist joins them on the way. All four are past forty and none of them is where he wanted to be; the walk is not a tour but an escape. The film is interested less in landscape than in conversation. Basilicata has barely been filmed, and the story says so outright, presenting it as a place unknown even inside Italy. The music is the group's own and gets played live between scenes. Rocco Papaleo directed, co-wrote and took one of the leads, his first film as director. Alessandro Gassmann, Paolo Briguglia, Max Gazze and Giovanna Mezzogiorno are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Italian road movies and unfamiliar geography. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events. The story is loose, some passages repeat, and what the journalist is for stays unclear to the end.