Where it was filmed 'Caracas'

Returning to the city of his youth, Naples, after many years of absence, Giordano Forte (Toni Servillo) no longer recognises the place which he now finds terrifying and threatening while also fascinating. Giordano is a well -known writer who informs the assembled gathering at a public meeting at the Biblioteca di Castel Capuano “Alfredo De Marsico” that he no longer wants to write.

As he fearfully walks through the narrow dark alleys of the rione Sanità, populated by a tangled range of humanity, living cheek by jowl with violence, persecution and small gestures of kindness, the writer enters an apartment in a storied building on vico Purgatorio ad Arco 7 and meets Caracas (Marco D’Amore). Caracas, who once found meaning and discipline in fascism, has now discovered the disorder in violence. There is also his impossible love for Yasmina (Lina Camélia Lumbroso) and the welcome that makes him decide to convert to Islam.

Giordano pushes his way through a crowd in piazza Garibaldi outside Napoli Centrale train station: the “railway planet” that welcomes the man who has become Caracas to everyone. In the alleys of the Vasto neighbourhood, throngs of people seem to wander without purpose: here, where the street vendors are of every ethnicity, the scent of spices and food from distant places is almost tangible. Muslim prayers can be clearly heard through the loudspeakers in the empty, panoramic piazza Mercato, dominated by the Church of Santa Croce e Purgatorio al Mercato.

Giordano decides to sing about the impossible love of Caracas and Yasmina as he wanders a city where everyone hopes to save themselves, to not get lost.  They all, Caracas and Giordano included, dream of awakening after a dark night’s bad dreams to a day of sunlight.