Fame

Beyond being world famous for its ceramics, the small city of Grottaglie in the south of Italy repeats a common quality of such towns: it is deadly boring. An artist named Angelo tried to flee from there once, but now he returns with the aim of shaking off the reigning apathy of the town and ending the “cultural desert”, as he puts it, from which his home town suffers. To this end, he teams up with friends and colleagues, experts and talented prodigies of street art, in order to start an artist collective to change all the facades of Grottaglie before the unbelieving eyes of the neighbors and to the annoyance of the authorities, with the help of a mother that is almost as mad as he. This documentary records that development, when vandalism and art fuse together in one of the most lucid punk acts that, for its obscurity, acquires an extraordinary power and beauty. (Mar del Plata International Film Festival)