Imagine that Rome is just like Los Angeles: it hasn’t rained in three years! The Eternal City is in the middle of the worst drought probably ever, just as Southern California actually is. In real life, in Rome it rains, it rains a lot, usually. However, Italian director-screenwriter’s Paolo Virzì’s film Siccità (Drought) tells the story of a fictional environmental crisis, a fantasy premise that inserts an element of comedy-drama into the urgency of climate change, a subject more and more en vogue in film, both in Hollywood and abroad.

Siccità was shot exactly one year ago in Rome, with an ensemble cast headed by Monica Bellucci, Valerio Mastrandrea, Silvio Orlando, Claudia Pandolfi, Elena Lietti and Gabriel Montesi. The script was written by Virzì with Paolo Giordano, Francesco Piccolo and Francesca Archibugi.

The story presents Rome, the Italian capital, as a city that is alarmingly dry: rain has not fallen in three years, and the lack of water is driving everybody insane and of course, is upsetting people’s lifestyle – does anyone remember la dolce vita? – and habits. It’s a city that is dying from thirst, the proverbial fountains and fontanelle dry as a bone.  In this metropolitan desert, we follow the plight of a group of characters of every age and from every walk of life, their existence linked by a single, possibly tragic destiny, as each of them embarks on a quest, not only for a drop of water to quench the horrible thirst but for personal redemption.

“The lack of water, and the lack of basic natural resources, can subvert any kind of norm and rule on which a community is based,” said Virzì: the 58-year-old director, born in Livorno, Tuscany, is known for hits at the Italian box-office such as Hardboiled Egg (1994), N (Napoleon and Me) (2006), Human Capital (2013) and Like Crazy (2016).  “Rome has always been rife with water, fresh, clean water: should we take all this for granted? Climate change and environmental abnormalities don’t seem to bestow anyone on Earth with a special treatment.” Even Romans, the film seems to admonish, should be very careful of the curveball that Nature – coupled with human greed and short-sightedness – could throw at us.

The film was produced by Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Gangarossa for  Wildside, part of the Fremantle Group (The Young Pope, My Brilliant Friend), while  Vision Distribution, jointly operated by Comcast’s Sky Italia and five other Italian production companies, will distribute it in Italy with plans for a theatrical release, hoping to start with a peak during the Venice Film Festival.  

With Siccità, Virzì also takes the opportunity to say something about the obsession with political correctness and the progressive impoverishment of global cultural production: “Artistic expression has the right and need to be nonconformist, and to be able to say things that may sound unpleasant or disturbing,” the Italian author told the daily newspaper Il Messaggero. “It’s always wise to raise doubts, to question oneself, society, and the status quo. An independent artist, including a filmmaker, must also be reckless. If you’re too cautious you may be able to avoid car accidents, all right; but that will always make you a mediocre artist.”

Imagining a Rome crazy with thirst in Siccità is for Virzì the equivalent of questioning everything one always thought one knew about something that – like Rome itself – never changes. Or so it seems, until disaster strikes.