Squali | FFDL

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SQUALI

SHARKS

Alberto Rizzi

107' /

Italy

/ 2024

Loosely inspired by The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, the film tells the story of four half-siblings and their fraught relationship with Leone Camasio, their domineering and deceitful father. Demetrio is a cold, overbearing ex-soldier drowning in debt; Ivan, a washed-up athlete clinging to his physique and tormented by the recent breakup with his ex-girlfriend; Alessio, a priest determined to redeem his family’s sins, devoted to a saint who appears to him in dreams. Then there’s Sveva, a troubled and defiant young woman—she’s the only one who stayed with their father, who treats her more like a servant than a daughter. The film is shot entirely in Lessinia, a landscape that evokes the atmosphere of classic Westerns: a borderland that becomes a metaphor for the boundaries of the human soul. The characters’ journeys intertwine with the land and its traditions. The discovery of ancient shark fossils in these mountains offers a striking parallel between the marine predator and the predatory nature of humankind.