Nostos: The Return

Franco Piavoli's 1990 film treats the Odyssey as sensation rather than narrative. The war is over; Odysseus and his men try to sail home across the Mediterranean, and the journey keeps being deferred. Piavoli lets go of plot almost entirely and builds the film out of water, wind, light and faces. Dialogue does not function as comprehensible language; meaning arrives through tone of voice, the noise of the natural world and the cutting. The real voyage is not at sea but in memory: childhood, parents, a woman, regret for what was left behind. This is an adaptation aimed not at people who want the sequence of events from the classical text but at those willing to experience it as a state of mind. Who it's for: viewers looking for wordless, nature-centred, poetic cinema. Who it's not for: anyone expecting a legible plot, dialogue or character development, none of which the film offers.