In the south of contemporary Italy, a community devotes itself to divinatory practices dating back to Roman antiquity, such as ornithomancy and the interpretation of celestial phenomena. In the midst of these tormented lands, a series of gestures and attitudes emerge, opening up new horizons.

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Director’s Statement

Arancia Bruciata is situated between ethnography and speculative stories, proposing a parallel world, opening a breach in the surrounding gloom. It is a film that seeks, invents and builds refuges, alternative stories, joyful micro-resistance practices. Arancia Bruciata is a world in which people use rituals inspired by divinatory practices to encourage us to contemplate, listen to and explore their natural environment in a unique way. This community, linked by practices that resonate with each other, invites us to step outside our established spatio-temporal reference points and take a fresh look at things. A divinatory calendar punctuates the film, its omens define the narrative. Using the calendar I decided to construct a fragmented narrative that would unfold over several seasons, following meteorological phenomena and the movements of the sky. These omens contaminate the writing and direction of the film. The idea is to move into a different concept of space and time, one that is less mathematical, where things neither add up nor divide, a non-linear temporality and movement in short.

Inextricably blending the real and the imaginary, Arancia Bruciata establishes new interconnections of signifiers between landscape, history, practices and people, the film sets up a singular world that puts forward hypotheses in order to create a horizon of expectation. A possible looking back. Survivals of past realities. A seed of vitality whose ever-present powers it is a question of exhuming.