30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

In the 1970s, headlines were focused on the clash between the "metal bender" Uri Geller and his detractors. High was the stake for those who managed to imitate him, "without make-up and without deceit". Physicist Ferdinando Bersani and Professor Aldo Martelli investigated some children who, like Geller, seemed to bend metal objects in their rural houses. This study inspired Antonio Bigini's first feature film. Pietro lives with his widowed and debt-ridden father in a small village in the Apennines. He is marginalized by his peers due to his ability to bend metal with his mind. Pietro is alone, just as his father is alone, as is the only Italian-American professor who decides to believe him, carrying out a study on his account that could win him a large sum of money. Pietro's interiority merges with the magical element of the peasant world which, in that historical period, was disappearing.

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  Antonio Bigini

  Antonio Bigini (1980) is a screenwriter, curator and director. He directed the documentary Ella Maillart-Double Journey (Visions du Réel, 2015) with Mariann Lewinsky. He is the author of the film Anita by Luca Magi (Doclisboa, 2012). For the Cineteca di Bologna he has curated various exhibitions on the history of cinema set up in museums such as the Cinémathèque Française, the Ara Pacis, the Museum of Rome, the MAMbo. The Properties of Metals (2023), which had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival,  is his first feature film.