Vintage images of a city on the decline are woven into the story of one queer couple separated for decades by prison bars in The Mouth of the Wolf, a hauntingly beautiful film from Italian director Pietro Marcello.
Vincenzo returns to Genoa after many years away, some spent in prison. He tours the city searching for the places of his childhood and the Genoa idealized in his father’s stories.
Although the reality of the city has changed, waiting for him in the small house in the ghetto is Mary Motta, his lifelong companion and a trans woman. Through material ranging from 1920’s home movies to scenes of massive ship launches and dynamited machinery, Marcello pays a mournful tribute to Genoa’s degeneration. Its fortunes are compared with those of shipwrecked survivors – as well as the two lead characters.
An intimate work with an evocative atmosphere told using a hybrid narrative structure that blends fiction and documentary The Mouth of the Wolf won the Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival when it was first released in 2009.
Watch the trailer for The Mouth of the Wolf below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.
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