Alessandro Rak, Italy, 2013

Under a leaden sky, among the apocalyptic presages of a Naples at the height of its degradation, a taxi driver named Sergio receives news which overwhelms him.  Nothing can ever be as it was.

Now Sergio looks at himself in the mirror and what he sees is a forty-year-old man, who has turned his back on music and has become lost in the limbo of his city.

The taxi becomes the microcosm within which he withdraws to escape his world, but into which the world comes and goes through his passengers.

As the storm rages outside, the car begins to crowd with memories, hopes, regrets, and new opportunities.

Now he knows who the passengers are: they are souls, ghosts, memories, paths. Or they are messengers of a sun rising elsewhere, bringing with it the revelation of what is beyond the confines of his windshield.

Sooner or later the rain will cease and the sky will open.

And from there, the end will come. Or the music will return.

This brilliant inaugural film from Alessandro Rak brings to cinematic form the essence of the arts and cultural festival of the same name.  The festival’s theme is about truth in its multiple aspects: the hidden truth, the relative truth, the revealing, the absolute and the revealed.