L’ULTIMO PAESE

At the festival

Federico Manzone presents his debut L’ultimo paese – his first long-form story published by Canicola – at BilBOlbul through an exhibition that, along with his drawings, traces back the whole documentary research that led to the final book. With his grotesque yet soft style, and an eye sensitive to the expressions and gestures of his characters, always on the line between theatricality and empathy towards their fate, L’ultimo paese tells the story of an imaginary village in the South of Italy, a ritual festival, a crippled misanthropic painter, a miraculous child, and several alleged visions of the Virgin Mary. The result is an ethereal world that looks distant to the modern eye thanks to its folklore, the mixture of religion and superstition, the raw substance of life. A world that is actually not so distant, though, and that Manzone, fascinated by the exotic nature of the roots of his country, has exploited not as a form of escapism from the present time, but as a way to question it with a puzzled smile.