La casa degli sguardi

Daniele is a young poet suffering from an unknown ailment. He refuses to automatically comply with the rituals that humanity seems to abide by: finding a job, starting a family… Instead, his life is drawn to the vortex of the void, and for the past four years he has been free-falling with “the precision of an Olympic diver.” He doesn’t even have the strength to write anymore and his existence seems to have lost any purpose. Daniele tries to seek help for his parents’ sake: he needs to survive, and he will do so through his work. On March 3, 1999, he signed a contract with a cooperative working with Rome’s pediatric hospital Bambino Gesù. In this special “home” inhabited by sick children, he encounters many gazes that will eventually lead him to an uncomfortable question: why is it worth it to keep on living and trying to build something if suffering seems to be the only law governing the world? With his raw grace, Daniele Mencarelli writes a brave story about seeking refuge in alcohol, spiraling into solitude, the prostration and shame of those dark years, the progressive liberation from suffering and an extraordinary rebirth.