Ivrea, late 1950s. In Olivetti’s factory-town, Victor Ledo (24) is an invisible clerk in the Calculations Office. His days pass among adding machines and payroll sheets, transcribing endless columns of numbers into ledgers like a human computer. He’s the kind of worker everyone depends on to solve problems — always the first to arrive and the last to leave. Yet the truth is, the job feels too small for him. Victor longs to join Olivetti’s new Electronics Division, a cutting-edge department where tomorrow is taking shape. But entry is reserved for engineers and highly specialized staff — and Victor is “just” a technician. Still, that dream may be closer than it seems. In the secrecy of his small apartment, he’s building a programmable electronic machine compact enough to sit on a desk: a primitive ancestor of the modern computer. He keeps it hidden, afraid to be seen, afraid of being judged. Everything changes when he meets Allison Hayes, (27) an ambitious American in Olivetti’s Design and Advertising Department. Determined to leave her mark before her visa runs out and she’s forced to return home, Allison urges Victor to bring the machine to Adriano Olivetti himself. He will make it work; she will make it elegant and accessible. Together, they give birth to Machine Zero in just a few days. But as success draws within reach, something unsettling begins to seep into Victor’s world. A Man in a black coat appears — the embodiment of his deepest fears — pushing Victor to confront his insecurities and, at last, believe that he deserves a place in the future he’s trying to create.
I am a writer and director who grew up in Ivrea, in what I would call an “Olivetti family”: my mother worked in human resources, my father was an editorial designer, and my grandparents were assembly-line workers. As a child, I lived inside a real, working utopia, and I came to believe that work could mean community — and a space for innovation. Only after leaving Ivrea—and later living in Los Angeles—did I realize how rare that vision truly was. Machine Zero is my debut feature, and it directly comes from these roots. It tells the story of a young man who, despite his fear, finds the courage to step out of the shadows and reveal himself as success comes within reach — only to find it more intimidating than failure. It is a film for those seeking space and a voice today, especially younger generations, reminding them that even from a small town, it is possible to envision and create the future. Therefore, the film will be shot entirely in Ivrea, at the original sites where that bold vision of the future first took shape, using archival footage and a visual style inspired by Olivetti’s innovative spirit. This retro-futuristic fable combines noir-thriller tension, constantly balancing between past and present — between utopia and the unease of what’s to come.
