La Bocca dell’Anima (The Healer), the debut film of Sicilian director Giuseppe Carleo produced by Favorita Film, will be relased in movie theaters in Italy starting from September 2024 by Artex Film. The film had is international preview at the Taormina Film Festival 2024.
La Bocca dell’Anima is a costume drama that explores the world of folk magic. The protagonist is a man who returns to his village, nestled in the unique landscape of the mountains of Sicily, after serving in World War II. An old witch liberates him from his suffering and initiates him into the art of ancient healers. This gift leads him to clash with other powers: the Church and the mafia. The film, recognized by the Italian Government as a work of national cultural interest, evokes with an anthropological and realistic gaze a collective imaginary that still today arouses scandal and shame to the point that fictional cinematography has almost always kept its eyes closed to this world, treating it only as horror or fantasy.
The story touches on universal and timeless topics: the invocation of the soul of a loved one evokes the idea of great lost love and its desperate search. This void can only be filled by a creative nature that has the strength to reconfigure the world of those who suffer. From this perspective, magical healers are like psychoanalysts of the masses and total artists.
Giuseppe Carleo’s previous short film, Parru Pi Tia, won forty-two awards and obtained over seventy nominations, including Venice Film Festival, Bogotá Short Film Festival, Palm Springs Short Fest.
Emanuele Milanini (Creative Director at DARO Studio) realized the official poster and marketing deck. Federica Pazzano (CEO at DARO Studio) is the Marketing Manager of the film, who handled the digital marketing campaign with Sara Buscemi (Social Media Manager at Favorita Film).
