The Сastle is a movie about one year inside Malpensa intercontinental airport, a place where bureaucracy, procedures and control put a serious strain on the freedom of individuals, animals and goods passing through. The airport is a strategic place where all law enforcement agencies of a country come together. Here's where new control measures are tested: a permanent security testing area unlike any other public place. Italian and foreign secret services, customs police, Guardia di Finanza (financial police), security guards, sniffer dogs, currency dogs and explosive detector dogs, closed circuit TV cameras everywhere and the ever-growing fear of an impending unknown danger. By watching the airport life we put together a portrait of a customs border in four movements. The Castle is a choral film, at times dramatic, at times ironic, at times thoughtful, which moves through symbolic situations through the four seasons.
Massimo D’Anolfi was born in Pescara and he has been working as a video-maker since 1993. He wrote the screenplay of Angela, a film by Roberta Torre screened at Cannes Film Festival at the Quinzaine des realizateurs in 2002. In 2003, he realized five radio documentaries for Radio RAI3. Back Home. Notes for a movie (2003) was selected at the Turin Film Festival and Play was selected in 2004 at the Festival dei Popoli in Florence. Together with Martina Parenti, he made The Betrothed (2006) presented at the Locarno Film Festival in Ici & Ailleurs and awarded a prize at the Festival dei Popoli and the Filmmaker Film Festival, and Great Expectations (2009) also presented at the Locarno Festival.
Martina Parenti makes documentaries for cinema and television. Among her films, there is The Summer of a Drinking Fountain (2006) selected at the Bellaria Film Festival and Animol (2003), presented at the Filmmaker Film Festival. She has made television programmes including School in Action (2006) and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2002). In 2006, she directed an episode of the collective film What’s Missing. Together with Massimo D’Anolfi, she made The Betrothed (2006), presented at the Locarno Festival and awarded a prize at the Festival dei Popoli and the Filmmaker Film Festival, and Great Expectations (2009) also presented at the Locarno Festival.
