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A Backwards Journey
Vanni is an old-style tomb robber who fights to be able to keep his independence from the Mob.
The Italian term “tombarolo” means “man of the graves” and it was an established illegal job in Italian society until the medieval period. The “tombarolo” searches for antiquities to sell them on the black market. It is usually a peasant, a simple man, born in a simple environment, who knows the secrets of the countryside, and combines crime with an impressive historical knowledge. Vanni is an old-style independent “tombarolo” who does not fit into the new environment controlled by the Mob. He makes an incredible discovery and the Mob starts chasing after him. Will he be able to keep his independence?
Last year we had a “vision” for the project and a selection of unusual, although not yet definitive, characters. Over the course of the year, having decided to transform the protagonist into a “tombarolo” (tomb robber), we carried out a research into the world of tomb robbers and the black market for illegal artefacts using books, magazines, on-line articles and interviews with people in the field. This work has materialised in the treatment of A Backwards Journey, more literary than visual, precisely because it is focused on the description of a realistic world, of its mechanisms, and of its characters’ traits in relation to the world they belong to. Currently our aim is to reach a conclusion to the story which involves a common destiny for all the characters, intertwining their paths. On the one hand, we are developing the relationship between the protagonist (Vanni) and his wife; on the other, we are pushing forward the secondary love plot between two of the main characters (Giò and Ljuba), building up a plot which is capable of constantly interacting with the landscape and evoking the great Italian tradition of Masks.
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