In Atlantide, Italian visual artist and filmmaker Yuri Ancarani presents Venice like we’ve never seen it before, through the eyes of local teen boys carving out their own space away from the city’s tourist trappings.
On the island of Sant’Erasmo in the Venetian Lagoon, teenager Daniele watches his male peers zip by in speedboats called barchini, envy written across his face. The barchini culture, we soon find out, is essentially a popular-boys-only club where tanned, muscular teen boys race their motorboats and carve their fastest speeds onto the city’s wooden mooring posts. Beyond racing, the boys carefully outfit their boats with internal speakers and lights, plaster their girlfriends’ names onto their boats, and cruise the canals at night. They throw parties on isolated islands, lounge and smoke idly under the sun, and escape police boats through daring maneuvers. And Daniele wants in.
Daniele has a speedboat of his own but laments that it’s not nearly fast enough. He constantly works on it in the hopes of one day marking the fastest speed and finding acceptance among his peers. While he doesn’t have a speaker system or fancy lights, he does stick his girlfriend Maila’s name across the inside of the bow. The couple cruise along in his boat together, the picture of two teens finding comfort in each other while searching for a way to fit in. In desperation, Daniele and Maila steal another boat’s propeller one night, but their plan backfires and Daniele finds himself even more of an outcast. He spirals deeper into trouble as he becomes more fixated on fitting in, leading him down a path with dangerous consequences.
Although we return often to Daniele, Ancarani jumps between boats and perspectives to provide us insight into barchini culture. Dialogue is scarce; instead the filmmaker relies on visuals and lingering sequences, employing sharp cinematography skills and a stunning aesthetic drawn from his background as a visual artist. He beautifully captures vivid waterscapes and landscapes, and deftly navigates the teen boys moving through the space, whether at idle or high speeds. Trap music, the genre of choice amongst these Venetian teens, often accompanies the visuals.
Filmed over several years, the passing of time is remarkably unnoticeable as the teens seem to remain unchanged, particularly in the way they navigate life. It’s a fascinating and creatively rendered window into their lives and specific culture, somewhat marred by the toxic masculinity on display; it’s disturbing to see in younger generations and hard to shrug off.
Stark contrast between the boys’ lives and the tourist’s image of Venice is offered during one particular party. The boys carry speakers through a lush canopy on what appears to be a forgotten island, only to emerge just a stone’s throw from the tourist centre. While teenagers party in the foreground, massive cruise ships fill the rest of the frame. It’s the only time we’re reminded of the Venice we’re familiar with, but presented this way it comes as a shock and feels disjointed. It differs greatly from the Venice Ancarani captures, one that seems abandoned apart from the boys and their cohort; we rarely see other people in the film. In addition, visuals of old mooring posts collapsing and rushing water overflowing Venice’s streets aid in the film’s nod to Atlantis, the forgotten underwater city of legend, which the film’s title itself references.
After a tense sequence of night racing, the film shifts gears to close out with a hallucinatory final journey through the canals. The camera turns 90 degrees, using the perfect reflections on the water’s calm surface to transform the canals into a surrealist dreamscape of shifting shapes and colours as dawn approaches. Ancarani creates a psychedelic experience for viewers set against an increasingly dramatic operatic score. The journey is best enjoyed by literally going with the flow; as soon as we try to distinguish specific features of reality, our eyes and mind come into conflict and leave us dizzy. Although it’s a lengthy sequence that comes at the end of a long runtime (105 minutes), it’s a bold creative choice that pays off overall, leaving us in a transcendent state.
After first making its world premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival, Atlantide had its Dutch premiere in the Masters section at this year’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).