Film Commission Torino Piemonte

In March 2022 our plan was to leave for Russia to conclude the research we had been doing for over a year regarding the development of White Days, the feature film we are currently writing. We were to meet Lika, Masha and Yana, and together start exploring and imagining a film able to tell the story of generation Z. This would be done through a small group of twenty-year-olds, who decide to leave their homes in different parts of the world to go on a journey together. They meet in person for the first time to recount the planet’s chilling cry at the end of the world.

We were unable to leave in March; and the cry that left us helpless was that of our travel companions in Russia, marooned overnight without hope and dreams. We decided to carry on despite everything, despite the restrictions, the VPNs, the war. We harnessed the Internet for what we think is its most amazing facet: crossing borders together while remaining far apart.

Happy Birthday was born: a short film, which embarks on a journey of investigation into a generation born in the year 2000. The journey begins on 28th February 2022, four days after the saddest and most bitter day that this year will leave in its trail. An entire generation is awakening, as if in a nightmare, into a world that is falling apart around them: the first generation to find itself dealing with an almost insoluble legacy at a very young age. This film begins to focus on these young adults, united in their connections and emergencies, able to perceive the planet as a single pulsating being. Z is a generation that, through social networks, describes itself as fluid, creative, self-destructive and potentially explosive; from birth it is a hyper-connected and oppressed generation preparing to manage an unpredictable, decadent, but also wonderful and amazing world. These youngsters, children of the climate emergency, consumerism, populism, the health crisis and war, will have the opportunity to tear down the walls surrounding individual certainty. They will learn not to tether their thoughts and adapt to change without fearing the anguish of uncertainty, using their talent to seize the opportunity of connections created in chaos. This generation will have to make difficult, traumatic choices and enormous sacrifices, but it will have the possibility to stage a real revolution by dissolving the illusions of previous generations; it will be able to do precisely what my generation did not want to do: have a collective conscience.