Andrea Miele

Professor Lipari teaches in a public school and is in a full-on existential crisis. He has no faith in himself and in the possibility of changing the world for the better. At school, a former student of his who is also a teacher will change his attitude.

Marco Belelli, aka Divino Otelma, is a well-known Italian philosopher and television personality. He has 6 degrees and owes his notoriety to his past career as a magician, chansonnier, politician. He is also the founder of the Theurgical Order of Elios and the Church of the Living, a cult with more than 20,000 followers, in which he has the role of a self-proclaimed God. Obstructed in the first stages of its production by the Covid-19 pandemic, the film unfolds over one long year of exchanges at distance between the director and the “Divine”, through Skype conversations in which the manifold topics relating to his multifaceted existence are treated. Significant figures who have been variously connected with his earthly life are also involved in this long journey of knowledge, contributing with their precious testimonies and blurring further our understanding of such a complex and layered figure.

This documentary film is a portrait of a film critic as seen by a filmmaker. While contemporary cinema manipulates reality by hiding itself, this experiment manifests the opposite in an explicit and evident way. The film critic has been asked to travel to the city of Bergamo to participate in a 70-minute film experiment: savoring 2 kg of oysters and drinking 2 bottles of wine, while simultaneously answering 15 general knowledge questions and 15 solicitations of a private and personal nature. The outcome is a ruinous game in which the meaning of filming and the fragility of a human being merge into a melancholic testament.