Fuori dal Mondo
Italian Contest – Feature Film
Brief Synopsis:
Presented as a project at Visioni Incontra in 2023, “Fuori dal Mondo” tells the life story of Enrico Mereu, the only resident on the island of Asinara. Enrico Mereu, today, is a sculptor of tree trunks that have become lodged in the rocks by the sea, he is a liberator of forms, but for many years he carried out the opposite activity: as a body guard in the maximum security prison on the same island. A man of radical choices, who would never cut down a tree and who learned from the inmates to live without superfluities. Today, everything drives him to leave his paradise, but it is a bond that is difficult to break. Enrico resists.
Director’s Notes:
Born in the interior of Sardinia, Enrico was educated in sculpture. The search for a ‘normal job’ brought him to the minor island of Asinara as a guard in the maximum security prison. With the closure of the prison in 1997, he rediscovered a wild, poetic freedom within himself. He decides, with his wife, to stay on the island while the other families leave. Sculpture and nature saved him from alienation and violence. He gives himself strict rules to have zero impact on the ecosystem and chooses to sculpt only the logs stuck on the rocks. It is a lifestyle that challenges the prevailing model. It disposes of space and time. It eschews compulsive consumption, media massification, induced desires and conventions. It only obeys the rhythm of the seasons, the sea and the sky. It lets the wind determine its encounters with people who are never ordinary. I have dedicated my work as a documentary filmmaker to this kind of radical choice, and this project is in total continuity with my authorial journey. In my previous documentaries I have explored the will of a paraplegic skier, following a car accident, who comes close to the Paralympics (Con le unghie e coi denti)or the turnaround of a former armed struggle militant, tortured in prison (Il Tipografo).