“And when, as time goes on, you would have discovered everything discoverable, your progress will be nothing but a gradual move away from humanity”.
When Ippei, a young Japanese geophysicist, arrives in Sicily to conduct his scientific research on Mount Etna, the real story of a nuclear scientist vanished in 1938, and the presence of a woman deeply rooted in that wilderness, will lead him to question whether logic alone can contain the fullness of meaning.
La Scomparsa is the debut film by young screenwriter and director Davide Palella (Locarno Academy 2022), written in collaboration with Martina Arrigoni. Through an ancestral fascination with volcanoes and the imagery surrounding them, the film aims to reconnect distant places and times—Italian and Japanese cultures and landscapes, 20th-century history with the present day, and Eastern and Western traditions—without any exoticism and with a profound spirit of reconciliation. With nature, with mystery.
The film has been selected for the European-Asian Ties That Bind 2025/26 co-development programm and the 2026 Locarno Academy, and received script development funding from the Italian Ministry of Culture.
YEAR
2026
WHAT
Debut film by Davide Palella
STATUS
in development
Directed by DAVIDE PALELLA
Produced by CHIARA GALLONI, IVAN OLGIATI
Written by DAVIDE PALELLA and MARTINA ARRIGONI
