LAGUNARIA: Salem Film Festival

A lyrical voice from a distant future relays a folk tale about a vanished city that was once among the most famous in the world – Venice, Italy. Amidst legends, rituals and hearsay, the narrator describes its daily life made of boats and its profound evolutionary relationship with the lagoon surrounding it. Immersed in a world somewhere between dream and reality, the audience wonders: Did that city ever exist? Was it ever inhabited, or was it a tourist park? Did it survive the floods and the plagues? Have its inhabitants managed to find a new way of living together? The result is a magical, beautifully shot and indefinite tale of a unique and fragile city that, somehow, speaks of every city on earth today.

A Q&A with Director Giovanni Pellegrini follows screening at the Peabody Essex Museum.