Atlantide

Life in Venice revolves around water, so the local teenagers don’t have souped-up mopeds, but powerful speedboats, or barchini instead. The tanned, muscular boys carve their initials into the city’s wooden mooring posts as well as the top speeds they’ve squeezed out of their boats.

Daniele is one of these teenagers, from the island of Sant'Erasmo in the Venetian Lagoon. It’s just a stone’s throw from the touristic old town, yet a completely different world. Daniele spends the lazy summer days with his friends on their boats, accompanied by a constant soundtrack of thumping beats, or with his girlfriend, tinkering with his outboard motor. The silent posing of the boys among themselves contrasts sharply with the intimacy of the young couple.

What begins realistically, as a documentary or hyper-realistic fiction, explodes into an operatic climax around a violent initiation ritual that is doomed to fail.