La Casa degli Sguardi

The film tells the story of 20-year-old Marco who has a great capacity for feeling, perceiving and empathising with the world’s pain. Marco writes poetry and uses drugs and alcohol to seek “oblivion”, a state of impenetrable unconsciousness, to protect him from the angst of existing and living. He drinks a lot; too much. He wants to escape his pain but, first and foremost, he’s looking to get away from himself. He has to anaesthetise himself in order to live, he says. He’s unable to be present unless his blood alcohol level is sky high, and he has ostracised himself from everyone around him - his friends and his partner - who are frightened by his desire to self-destruct. Even his father, a witness to his slow suicide, is incapable of managing so much suffering, but at least he tries to be there. His mother, meanwhile, has been missing for some years, leaving a gaping hole in his life. When he has to start a job in the Bambin Gesù cleaning cooperative, Marco is convinced that this experience, working in direct contact with sick children, will end up killing him.