Graffiti Doc

This is the story of a Greek physician who collects pendants and bracelets. This is the story of an Italian woman who has been fighting for 15 years to «make bodies talk.» This is the story of those who watch over the forgotten migrants.

In the summer of 1961, a group of young Italian anthropologists made a clandestine journey through Spain, in order to record popular songs that supported anti-Franco resistance. As a result of their work, they were prosecuted and their recordings were censored. Sixty years later, and guided by Emilio Jona, aged 92, the last living member of that group of travellers, we recover the unpublished recordings and reconstruct the journey, today, across an emotional and political landscape, regaining historical memories through these songs, as relevant today as they were then.

How would you feel if the state sold the mountain above your village to a big multinational, your country's beautiful islands, its beaches or your great monuments? Strangled by debt, governments and public administrations all over Europe act like any indebted family: they try not only to reduce costs, but attempt to replenish their coffers by putting their most valued family possessions on the market. More often than not, this includes part of the countries' historical and natural heritage: castles, islands, mountains, beaches, palaces, ancient arenas and archaeological sites. But who really owns these properties? Aren't they our common heritage, our history that will end up in private or corporate hands and will no longer be accessible to all? Or is the private sector more efficient in managing these properties? And if so, who decides on the best deal? Are there democratic proceedings for the sale of our common good? The people of Europe want accountability.

Nino was a bricklayer and lived in the outskirts of Palermo with his family. Now he lives alone on top of a mountain and is a prophet. He calls himself Isravele – and the name must be read backwards to understand its meaning. Up there, on a barren mountain on the edge of the city, is his home: an old abandoned observatory that in twenty years of solitary work he transformed into a portentous naive temple. Traveling up and down the mountain on a daily basis, Isravele takes with his backpack loaded with pebbles and concrete. His idea is to bring the bottom to the top in order to purify it. He transforms neglect into beauty, through constant work, bordering on the inhuman, which he calls prayer. But for some time more and more tourists and onlookers have been threatening the peace of this place, where a mysterious man is said to be alive, who announces the coming of the Apocalypse. Over there, in the city, they call him the hermit.