THE YOUNG OBSERVANT

At dusk, a fourteen-year-old boy carries food into his family’s cowshed for the last time. His life in the mountains is about to come to an end: he is enrolling in catering school to learn the trade as quickly as possible. The school is renowned for its strict teaching methods: students learn that the customer is the fundamental purpose of their work and the source of their fortune. The lessons on cooking, dining room etiquette, law and religion, repeated day after day, make them endlessly confront their weaknesses, insecurities and skills. At the end of the year Luca, immaculate in his black uniform with shiny shoes, will walk into the great hall and face the first test of his new career as a waiter and future maître d’hôtel.

DAVIDE MALDI

Born in Rome, graduated from the Roman School of Comics, he began working as an illustrator and storyboard artist for cinema. He attended the Faculty of Performing Arts and Sciences at La Sapienza in Rome. Since 2001 he has worked as a director producing films, documentaries and social research works; he also collaborates with many experimental theater companies and visual art project. In 2008 he won an artistic residency at the New York Film Academy in New York. In 2014, his first feature film, Frastuono, was presented at the international competition of the 32nd Turin Film Festival. In 2017 he founded L’Altauro, a cultural association with the aim of developing and producing cinematographic works and artistic projects.

The life of the individual in any society is a series of passage from one age to another and from one occupation to another. Wherever there are fine distinctions among age or occupational groups, progression from one group to the next is accompanied by special acts, like those which make uo aprenticeship in pur trades. Among semicivilized peoples such acts are enveloped in in religious ceremonies, since with them no act is entirely free of the sacred.

• Locarno Film Festival
• Annecy Festival du Film Italien
• Dok Leipzig
• Gijon International Film Festival
• Torino Film Festival

Doker Kids 2020