RAFFAELLA MARINIELLO

ZioRiz takes its name from the Canadian canoe on which, in the film, a single person slowly descends the waters of the Volturno River, from its natural source in Rocchetta al Volturno to its mouth in the Tyrrhenian Sea near the town of Castel Volturno. The narrative, punctuated by the river’s meandering waters, unfolds in three chapters that portray the gradual transformations of the landscape and its environmental histories: Fertile Land, Working Land, Land of Fires. Southern Italy’s longest river thus becomes a medium for narrating a contradictory territory, where enchantment, industriousness and anthropogenic devastation alternate. The water flowing through the land is like a palimpsest that rewrites the shape of the soil, carrying within itself an archive of traces of experience.