Letters from the desert (eulogy to slowness)

original title:

Lettere dal deserto (elogio della lentezza)

directed by:

cinematography:

Pau Mirabet

music:

Cristiano Fini

production:

Michela Occhipinti, Start Studios

distribution:

country:

Italy

year:

2010

film run:

88'

format:

HD/Betacam - colour

aspect ratio:

16:9

sound:

Dolby SR

release date:

24/05/2011

festivals & awards:

The world runs. Hari walks. His worn-out shoes cover long distances in the desert to deliver messages that are closed in letters with a precious handwriting for addressees who live in remote villages, cloistered in a forgotten temporal dimension, out of this world.
The letters talk about loves, weddings, successes and deceases, those that bear news of death are immediately recognisable, the envelopes with the right corner torn off, those that Hari reads out in the doorway, and then tears to bits, because bad news must be destroyed, scattered, deleted forever.
In a world in which time is luxury, speed is synonymous with efficiency and civilization, and in which people communicate pressing buttons that reproduce identical characters, the story of Hari is an island fossilized in time. When the only way to communicate was a sheet of paper, a pen, some ink. When people were still able to wait. A return to slowness, and to nature, the harsh nature of the Thar desert.
Until some weird metallic tower arrive, as intruders in the landscape, to revolutionize the life of the small village…