Nostos: The Return (1989)

Original title

Nostos: il ritorno

Directed by

Franco Piavoli

Genre

epic film

Country

Italy

Runtime

1h 27m

Rating

7.3 of 10 from 37 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A man travels home across the Mediterranean Sea after a war. He faces natural obstacles and his own memories. The film uses almost no words and focuses on landscapes and nature.

meditativeslow-burncontemplativedreamlikevisually lushminimalistatmosphericmelancholic

What happens

Nostos: The Return (Italian: Nostos: Il ritorno) is a 1989 Italian adventure drama film directed by Franco Piavoli, starring Luigi Mezzanotte and Branca De Camargo. Drawing from Homer's Odyssey, the film depicts Odysseus' homeward journey across the Mediterranean Sea following the Trojan War, and his struggles against natural obstacles and inner torments. The film relies on visual storytelling and the portrayal of nature; dialogue is minimal, without subtitles, and spoken in an imaginary Mediterranean language. Nostos: The Return explores themes of homecoming, the memory of war, time, and man's relationship with nature. Piavoli began to make films in the 1950s, but Nostos: The Return was his first feature-length fiction film. Envisioning it as "symphonic" as opposed to "theatrical" cinema, Piavoli was in control of most of the creative process and a cast with little film experience. The processes of preparing, filming, and editing the project each took one year to complete. Nostos: The Return premiered at the 1989 Locarno Festival and received a limited release in Italy in 1990. Reception has been largely positive, with critics describing the film's depiction of nature as beautiful. The story has been interpreted as a lyrical version of Homer's epic poem, as a simplified retelling, and as an original narrative. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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