Smiley

A fifteen-minute short, written by Antonio Ciravolo, who also composed the music. Filming took place in the baroque streets of Catania and at the Oasi Regina Pacis therapeutic community in Motta Sant’Anastasia, where the part of the story set inside the care home takes place.

The story

At a care home for people living with mental illness, two patients decide to help a newly arrived young man find a love he has lost. The search takes them out into the streets of the city and across the paths of some distinctly odd characters.

The Apostle is a man in the grip of religious delusion: he sees God in flickering lights — the strip lights in bathrooms, street lamps, car indicators. God speaks to him and tells him what to do. The Joker is a compulsive gambler, convinced that the game can fill the empty stretches of a day; he chases the bet and loves the good life.

One day the two of them cross paths with a young man just arrived at the home. He does not speak and does not look at anyone: he only holds a photograph of a girl between his fingers. The Apostle and the Joker decide to help him find her.

Over the course of a single night, through the baroque streets of Catania, the three meet heavily made-up fortune tellers, eccentric sandwich-bar owners and a few strange bikers, until they reach an empty nightclub where the young man’s story comes back to life and rejoins his present.

It is a hymn to the will to start again, to the chance encounters that save a life, to the sudden taste of new friendship, and to the mouth. The mouth and its edges, which needs no voice to remind us that we live in the balance of one gesture, reaching for a smile.

Festivals and awards

Smiley won the «Cinema and Psychiatry» section at Corti in Cortile, the international short film festival in Catania. The section is dedicated to films dealing with mental illness, which makes the award particularly fitting for a story set inside a therapeutic community.

The film was also presented at Via dei Corti, the independent short film festival in Gravina di Catania, at its fourth edition in 2018. The screening was held on 29 November 2018 at the Auditorium Angelo Musco, in the Campus — Mondo Corto section, followed by a conversation with Antonio Ciravolo and Daniele Di Mauro, chaired by Andrea Maglia.

Credits

• Screenplay: Antonio Ciravolo
• Music: Antonio Ciravolo
• Direction, camera and editing: Daniele Di Mauro
• Locations: Catania and the Oasi Regina Pacis therapeutic community, Motta Sant’Anastasia
• Running time: 15 minutes · English subtitles available