The Haunting Film “Venetian Molecules” (Molecole) shot in Venice during Quarantine pre-opens the Venice Film Festival

Molecole - Photo courtesy ASAC

(Venice, Italy) Filmmaker Andrea Segre has had a complicated relationship with Venice, his father’s hometown, as well as a complicated relationship with his deceased father, Ulderico, who was born in 1946. Andrea, who lives in Rome, had come to Venice on February 20, 2020 to work on two projects for cinema and theater about the banes of Venice — over-tourism and high water. 

Then the global pandemic struck, and Andrea was quarantined here in Venice. The film took a completely different direction.

Andrea weaves home movies and photographs of his father’s boyhood in Venice — material that the director did not know existed until after Ulderico’s death — with his own masterful images and thoughts, capturing the essence of Venice during the lockdown. He digs deep inside himself to find some type of resolution to an unanswered letter he had written to his father, as he speaks to Venetians about how life is lived inside the lagoon. The film is a poignant love letter both to Venice and to Ulderico, and illustrates the impact that living inside a singular city like Venice has upon one’s soul. It touched my heart. 

Andrea Segre’s Director’s Statement says it best:

“To make a film you have to think about it, write it, organise it, shoot it. This wasn’t the case for Molecole. I experienced it and it came out by itself, in a time and dimension I couldn’t foresee. Molecole just gushed out. Like water. Like the molecules, the material we are all made of but can’t see. 

My father was Venetian and was a physicist-chemist. He studied molecule movements, the small elements of the material we can’t see but that determines the evolution of our lives. Often unexpectedly. 

Like the virus that blocked the world and showed me a solitary, magical Venice where I was able to encounter my father and understand what this fragile, powerful city can teach us.“

Molecole opens in theaters in Italy today, September 3, 2020. When international distribution is available, I will let you know. Not only a film for those who love Venice, Molecole captures in real time the surreal world created by a global pandemic, and the disorienting emotions and periods of retrospection that impacted all of us. I thought it was brilliant.

Ciao from the Venice Film Festival,
Cat Bauer
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog