A sunless, humid Naples, between fascism and Islam, is what Marco D'Amore describes in his third film, Caracas, based on the book Napoli Ferrovia by Ermanno Rea and in theaters from 29 February with Vision Distribution.
Between reality and dream, the singular story of Giordano Fonte (Toni Servillo), a Neapolitan writer who, having returned to his city after a few years, discovers that he is in the midst of a creative crisis.
It is a city that he no longer recognizes, but the meeting with Caracas (D'Amore), a restless man in search of meaning, who militates in the far right and who is about to convert to Islam, puts him back on track, reopens him to writing.
Giordano thus finds himself in a black adventure in a Naples that is too wet, among fascists who beat blacks and Muslims and the latter who pray in very precarious mosques.
A nightmare for everyone: luckily there is the impossible love between Caracas and Yasmina (Lina Camelia Lumbruso), a heterodox Muslim who could save him from himself.
"Unclassifiable, inexplicable, how inexplicable life is and that an old writer approaches someone like Caracas" D'Amore immediately says today in Rome of this 'Martian' film.
While Servillo underlines: "It was an exciting circumstance to find myself working with Marco who grew up in my theater company. It's nice that today he is directing me. This film has a complex language on complex topics. Then there is the novel by Rea who I knew and love."
And Servillo again: "I enjoyed playing Giordano, an old communist caryatid who decides to return to Naples on the occasion of an award and not to write anymore because he is in the throes of confusion. He then meets this surreal character that is Caracas and as a writer of true things turns into a machine of dreams. Because at a certain point there is a doubt in the viewer: has Caracas really met him or is it just an imagination or a demon inside him? Naples - he continues - is a city that it always amazes you and it's nice that this film talks about something never told before: the world of the far-right fascist and that of the large Islamic community."
D'Amore underlines: "I wanted to show a Naples outside the usual stereotypes, a city between Gotham City and Sin City. However Rea tells a story that really happened. That of a man who risks breaking his neck if his parachute doesn't open ".
On right-wing and fundamentalist tendencies, the director says: "I'm always scared of those who have too many answers. I always react with fear to certain fanaticisms because I have many doubts and in my opinion these bring us closer to understanding things and they are modernity."
Caracas is a Picomedia, Mad Entertainment and Vision Distribution production in collaboration with Prime Video in collaboration with Sky, produced by Luciano Stella, Roberto Sessa, Maria Carolina Terzi and Carlo Stella.
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