Sulla Strada

A film by Uli Möller

Stories and figures along a road. Not just any road, but the SS 16, la Adriatica, which runs 1000 kilometers from the north to the south along Italy's Adriatic coast. One thousand kilometers past ports, beaches, rest stops, factories, hotels, restaurants, fishing boats, lives both big and small, all on the road.

The air whirrs on the road. Cars, gas stations, people. The sea.

A German woman on vacation arrives by ferry to Ravenna. A Senegalese man is on the same ship. She stays in her car at a rest stop, and he continues on with his brother as a beach vendor, walking from beach to beach along the Adriatic coast. She steals money from a bathroom attendant because she has to make a phone call, and he is left alone after his brother is arrested.

A prostitute on the road is making a pilgrimage to the black Madonna of Loreto, but still cannot avoid her fate. Then there is an Albanian construction worker, who can no longer endure harassment from his Moroccan co-workers and a girl, who is really an angel.

Potholes in tar, tears in fishermen's nets, restless beings, of this world and beyond.

And the road continues on, loud, putrid, ugly and beautiful, hot and sweaty. Sometimes as still as a grave, others as picturesque as a film set – contradictions everywhere you look. Nothing changes on the road. The inner disruption remains, but so does the yearning – for a better life, somewhere, sometime…

The Chinese man in his roadside garment shop simply says: Italia? L’ Italia non c´è ....