LASSU’
(Up there)
80 minutes, 2022
Director : Bartolomeo PAMPALONI (Italy)
Production : Aeternam Films (France), Graffiti Doc (Italy)
At the top of the mountain overlooking Palermo stands a building decorated entirely with naive mosaics. It is an abandoned observatory, which for more than twenty years has been the home of Nino, alias Isravele, a former mason from the Brancaccio district who lives up there alone, on the fringes of the world. Day after day he devotes himself body and soul to this enormous, almost inhuman project: but now that it’s almost complete, visitors are increasingly threatening his tranquility.
With a philosophy degree from Florence university, Bartolomeo PAMPALONI studied Arts and Theatre at the University of Paris 8. At the same time he made his first short films and began working on film and television sets. As a student director at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the National School of Italian Cinema, he wrote and directed several short films and a documentary. His first documentary feature, Roma Termini, won the Special Jury Mention at the Rome Film Festival 2014 and was selected for the Raindance Film Festival 2015.