On a riverbank not far away from a small village, nestled in the unspoiled nature, a teenager stands after having taken a tough decision. Time goes by observing tiny details of life in a seemingly solitary environment, depicting a bird hopping nearby, on a notebook where many detailed pictures of birds are drowned. Pencil and book fall on the ground before the portrait is completed. Two empty bottles of oranje juice reawaken the memory of the dialogue with the friendly barman, the money left in his hand. The teenager, crawling to get next to the river, throws stones to it to test its depth, shivering because of the high splashes. Lazy blowflies' shadows on the sand suddenly catch the eye. Rising again a vertigo involves the world, the ground looks like slipping away upstream. Regained the balance, the teenager starts to collect stones while moving forward in the river, towards the point where the water becomes green.

Between many other evidences, the trauma of the pandemic showed how the society in which we live in seems to have withdrawn any relationship with the death. The concept of it is not anymore a significant and natural part of living itself but a real taboo. Who especially endures the pressure for a performative vitalism are adolescent people, whose psychological and social pain is another of the biggest collective removal. Fenoglio's short tail "Green water", with a style that captures an existential condition with no temporal boundaries, provides the character and the tragical action without any moral judgement, involving us in the event as it happens, with any clues for causes, explanations, responsibilities that could help our needing of a logical explanation. It forces to face a hard reality rather than evaluating it, giving the opportunity to watch at the unspeakable.

Director
Story
Manuel Coser, liberamente tratto dal racconto "L'acqua verde" di Beppe Fenoglio
Screenplay
Director of photography
Film Editor
Set Design
Original Music
Maria Teresa Soldani
Altri credits

Emanuele Segre (Postproduzione)

Production Director
Organizzatore generale
Producer
Production
con il sostegno di Film Commission Torino Piemonte - Short Film Fund - dicembre 2022
Last update: 15 May 2024