Monsieur Pigeon

MONSIEUR PIGEON

a documentary film by Antonio Prata
Switzerland 2019, 56′, o.v. Italian, French, English

Festivals & Prizes

18th International Festival Signs of the Night – Bangkok 2020 – Prix pour le meilleur documentaire
Mediterraneo Video Festival – Ascea 2020 – Prix spécial du Jury
Motivation: “Questo film ha il merito di raccontare una storia non ordinaria in maniera pacata ed estremamente poetica. Induce a riflessioni profonde alternando immagini hitchockiane con immagini di una Parigi borghese e rassicurante. Traccia il ritratto di un ribelle gentile che, per uscire dall’indifferenza a cui era stato condannato, adotta i piccioni del Marais. Intensi, penetranti e sinceri, i monologhi in cui Giuseppe racconta il suo amore ostinato per gli “ultimi”.”

Synopsis:

Giuseppe lives in a van in the heart of Paris, a few meters from the Beaubourg. He has long since stopped communicating with men and his life is barely affected by the excited pace of the thousands of people who cross the Marais every day. His time, his resources, his physical as well as mental space are dedicated to pigeons, the birds that inhabit the cities, abused animals that the old man defends and feeds suffering daily threats and attacks. Pigeons were considered reliable messengers in the past, but are now the most hated animals by man. In a Paris wounded by the terrorist attacks, people try to react as they can to fear and loss without losing their soul. Giuseppe, in his microcosm, immersed in his poetics, observes what surrounds him, convinced that the world has already lost its soul. A metropolitan fairy tale about loneliness and the ruins of a society in which every gesture of rebellion seems to dissolve into indifference.