Ferale State follows the life of Giovanni, an iron collector facing eviction who lives in San Cristoforo, a working-class neighborhood of Catania with a high crime rate.
Giovanni lives in a slum and makes ends meet by doing small hauls, emptying cellars, dismantling engines, and selling salvaged items here and there.
He's never paid taxes, insurance, or car tax, but he's managed to stay away from the most dangerous friendships, especially since he married Xiomara, a Dominican woman with whom he has three children.
Unforeseen events and the risk of prison are an integral part of Giovanni's existence. A bad outcome is a given. So are the piles of foreclosures and evictions.
In addition to a tireless desire to work, Giovanni has a controversial but clear opinion on politics and the state. He expresses this by skillfully reshaping the mafia values that, despite everything, are his own. It's difficult to agree with him, but his words prompt reflection on the city Giovanni inhabits, its people, and its history of mistakes and neglect.
DIRECTOR'S NOTES
The film was born from the desire to convey the feeling I have towards the city where I was born: Catania.
A historic pivot in the balance of national politics, this city has always paid (and continues to do so) for the reckless decisions of a conscienceless political class and a corrupt and corrupting class of entrepreneurs and professionals, which have created absurd and irreparable wounds clearly visible in its urban fabric.
A city torn in two, where the people always pay the highest price for a chosen and strongly desired immobility by a handful of individuals who enrich themselves, undisturbed, on a completely illegal basis. A city where the idea of "inevitable survival" is so ingrained in its inhabitants that it prevents them not only from carving out, but even from imagining, a different possibility.
