Happy as Lazzaro – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

Imagine Visconti, Pasolini, and Chaplin coming together to make a film that tackles contemporary exploitation with both lightness and humor.

This is a fitting description of the remarkable work by Alice Rohrwacher, the director of The Wonders, who once again showcases her gift for crafting mesmerizing stories that sit at the crossroads of magical realism and socially conscious cinema. The tale of the titular Lazzaro, a simple young man from a Sicilian village, serves as the starting point for a portrait of the inequalities that poison the world.

The story revolves around the meeting of the kind-hearted Lazzaro and the dreamy Tancredi, a young nobleman with an extraordinarily vivid imagination. Their lives in the isolated pastoral village of Inviolata are dominated by the fearsome Marchioness Alfonsina de Luna, queen of a tobacco empire and Tancredi’s mother. The bond between the two young men is solidified when Tancredi asks Lazzaro to help stage his own kidnapping. This strange and improbable alliance proves transformative for Lazzaro, forging a friendship so profound that he is willing to travel through time and space in search of Tancredi.