(from Rome Luigi Noera with the kind collaboration of Stefano Sica and Valentina Vignoli – Photos are published courtesy of the Fondazione Cinema per Roma)

With a light and pleasant film, at the same time the director manages to explain with an unpublished story, the tensions that society goes through

PANORAMA ITALIA Competition

The War of Tiburtino III by Luna Gualano – Italy, 2023, 95’

SYNOPSIS

In the neighborhood “Tiburtino III”, on the outskirts of Rome, A small asteroid falls from the sky. In the next days, almost all the inhabitants of the neighborhood begin to behave in an inexplicably strange way: everyone sucks AA batteries. An unlikely group of young characters discover that many have been infected by parasites and that aliens intend to conquer the entire world.

REVIEW

The director of Go Home – At their home, film winner of the Panorama Italia competition in Alice nel 2018, returns with a science fiction comedy that tells in a new way all the contradictions of the Roman suburbs.

We are at Tiburtino III, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Rome, in which an asteroid has just fallen from the sky. The object was shipped by aliens and is being used as a Trojan horse, to enter our planet and take control of it from the inside through humans. In fact, worms emerge from inside the stone, that transform men into alien creatures by penetrating their noses. To avoid attracting too much attention, the infected inhabitants set up barricades around the neighborhood, closing every access road and isolating it from the rest of the city.

In the following days three friends from the neighborhood who were still not infected, they decide to investigate the phenomenon. Pinna, Panettone e Chanel they are three boys marginalized by the rest of society who live day by day among a thousand gimmicks and illegal activities. Suddenly he arrives in the neighborhood Lavinia – a famous fashion blogger from Northern Rome – who was unaware of the situation, he comes to the neighborhood exclusively to find a trend with the aim of increasing his followers. You will be the only non-resident in the neighborhood capable of entering it, and she will fearfully join the three boys, after watching many anomalous scenes. Despite a character opposite to the three suburban friends, Lavinia joins them with the common goal of putting an end to this invasion. Eventually a product will be found that will be lethal to alien creatures, causing all the still uninfected inhabitants to unite in an intense fight to exterminate the species and bring normality back to the neighborhood.

Director Luna Gualano uses genre cinema to tell the social problems of a reality. Tiburtino III is narrated in all the degradation that exists in a suburban neighborhood, taking care of the character of every single character who lives there, in a representation similar to the Rebibbia of Zero limestone. Besides all the negatives, the director wanted to express the sense of community that a difficult context can potentially create, if he is brought out of his daily silence by being faced with a problem that affects his loved ones. The character representations of the three boys who live in the suburbs and the influencer girl are well done but appear obvious and banal..

The war of Tiburtino III, through its fantastic story, it is a film used to tell the viewer some typical peculiarities of society 2023. Such as the propagandistic use of mass media by politicians and influencers, interesting only for wanting to show off, wallowing in other people's problems just for personal gain. Furthermore, the beliefs that men have towards magicians or people with supernatural powers are emphasized. After discovering poison to kill aliens, Pinna, to be credible in front of the mother, he tells her that it was Padre Pio who illuminated this miracle in a vision. Soon the boy will become the point of reference for the entire neighborhood, which will elevate him to a local God.

The War of Tiburtino III turns out to be a light and pleasant film, managing at the same time to explain with an unpublished story, the tensions of our society.

Stefano Sica