Italy – 2019 – color – 24’

Direction: Simone Salvemini
Screenplay: Simone Salvemini
Camera Operators: Simone Salvemini, Gianluigi Strafella
Editing: Simone Salvemini, Gianluigi Strafella
Color correction, Digital Effect, Compute Graphics: Simone Salvemini, Gianluigi Strafella
Live Sound: Diego Brancasi
Music: Mirko Lodedo
With: Mirko Lodedo, Antonio Marra, Cosima Poli, Pasquale Sabatelli, Giuseppe Ciciriello, Stefania Melacca, Sandro Malerba, Gianluca Nisi, Abdulkarim Yacoub, Antonella Facecchia, Antonella Facecchia, Antonio Serinelli, Valentino Di Salvatore
Executive Production: La Kinebottega
Production: Apulia Film Commission, Fondazione con il Sud

SYNOPSIS
The community of Ceglie Messapica, a little gem in the Itria Valley, is waiting for summer to arrive to celebrate a great popular event, the “Festival dei Giochi” (Festival of Games), which every year involves thousands of people, driven only by the desire to play on the sunny streets. Children and elderly people, artists and doctors, politicians and farmers, young migrants and former gamblers have fun under the careful gaze of the Town Crier, Mirko Lodedo, a composer, musician and “Pied Piper”. Mirko leads us to discover an event that enhances traditional street games, inviting the whole community to a deeper reflection on the “meaning of gaming/gambling” and showing us the extremes: between the enchantment and innocence of children and obscure addiction of gamblers.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

“In times of “social distancing”, Waiting for Cockaigne is an injection of healthy humanity. The entire production project of this short film was a hymn to sharing and conviviality. Driven by the very serious cheerfulness of Mirko Lodedo, an eclectic and sensitive artist, all the participants gave the best of themselves to preserve and enhance the beauty of an idea that is inherent in each of us: the innocence of gaming cannot be confused with the dynamics of gambling.
The “Blue Book” published by the Agency of Customs and Monopolies shows us an outrageous yearly increase in per capita spending on “entertainment machines” and various lotteries. The spread of gambling addiction is the logical consequence of a social deviance that cannot be underestimated. Every year, “Festival dei Giochi” tries, with its joyful vitality and in its own small way, to sensitize the community on these issues still little addressed by the big entertainment industry.”