SYNOPSIS:

Antonella is an Apulian actress who for years has been travelling the coastlines of her region in search of stories. She moves through places with curiosity and without a fixed agenda, learning to look beneath the surface of things — under the sand, between stones worn smooth by the wind — and to recognise that no place is ever truly still. The film follows a journey along the sea, both literal and inward, through some of the most layered places on the Adriatic and Ionian coasts of Puglia: Vieste and the Gargano, Siponto, the Tremiti Islands, Scalo di Furno, Porto Cesareo, Leuca. At each stop, Antonella meets archaeologists, researchers and local inhabitants, coming into contact with stories that surface between depth and surface. It is through these encounters that the Mediterranean takes shape: not as a backdrop, but as a protagonist. A liquid road, a submerged archive, a space where identities are deposited and transformed over time. The documentary builds a dialogue between present and past: today's beachgoers and sailors from three thousand years ago are searching for the same thing — a landfall, a home, a

continuity. The ancient Aragonese towers tell of raiders and friendly fleets; the seabed holds shipwrecks, amphorae, a small Egyptian deity embraced by a fisherman after seventy years. The Tremiti Islands — a postcard paradise — reveal their other face: a place of exile for Julia the Younger, for over twelve hundred Libyan deportees during the Italo-Turkish War, for anti- fascist intellectuals forced to sign regulations that forbade them even from speaking foreign languages. The title — metabolé, transformation in ancient Greek — is the film's key. The sea preserves, transforms, returns. Places never stop living. The past flows inside the present, changing shape but remaining. Antonella guides the viewer with an intimate, curious voice. At the journey's end, she opens her heart like a mainsail: the sea she has told stories about is also the sea that lives within her.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:

Lorenzo Scaraggi is an Apulian filmmaker, documentary director and storyteller. Co-founder of the production company Omero su Marte, he tells stories of humanity and identity with close attention to landscape, history, social dynamics and anthropological research. Through the documentary form and a hybrid use of photography, podcast and reportage, he builds immersive narratives, often on the road and always driven by a strong personal curiosity. His productions grow out of intensive fieldwork that takes shape through long solitary journeys in his camper van Vostok100k, long-distance walks, individual explorations and cultural projects in the territories. In his work he seeks a visual sensibility capable of conveying complexity and poetic depth, while maintaining a constant dialogue with the communities and places he encounters. He collaborates with public and private organisations to promote cultural heritage and to build new forms of storytelling about territories.

AWARDS and SCREENINGS: Director Lorenzo Scaraggi, Producer Lorenzo Scaraggi, Omero su Marte, (Italy)