hours of footage collected
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hours of material shot
countries
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I Talk Otherwise is a movie about a journey along the Danube seen from the viewpoint of the river itself. It has been shooted in 8 countries and 9 languages, from West to East, from Capitalism to Communism, from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, flowing between the mixtures, the rafts, and the cultural contradictions of the lands crossed by the great river.
Conceived as a road movie, it trails the river from its source in Germany, across Austria and some former Communist countries – Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania – all the way to its mouth in the Black Sea, on a journey from the past to the future of the Europe.
The Danube, with its singular and yet multifaceted point of view, a perspective that remarkably reflects its distinctive character, becomes an unambiguous elusive guide. An allegoric emblem of the journey taken between the spiraling ideals of the modern man; through reminiscences, representations, metamorphoses that have catalyzed the life and the transitions of the Twentieth Century.
Sounding the traces of tradition in all their reticence, in places where they clash with the arrogant modernity, the river flows towards its future and accompanies us to the discovery of our past. The Black Sea proves to be a return to the origins, a “meta-final” of a backward journey which reveals once again the jagged horizon of contemporaneity.

DANUBE ITINERARY
> the origin loves to hide: the dispute of the three springs
– Breg/Brigach/Donau, Black Forest, Germany
> water turns into air and then falls: in the ascent to the ideals the religions chase each other
– Ulm, Germany
> isolated individuals, isolated spaces, isolated thoughts: in the mechanics of the modern man
– Regensburg, Germany
> universe of stars: the show of faith between TV, science and belief
– Passau, Germany
> dream maze: displaying images from a cab, mesmerized by metropolitan crossroads
– Vienna, Austria
> the Iron Curtain: the West becomes the East, the horizon behind the border
– Bratislava, Slovakia
> the direction of time: freedom and illusions between capitalism and communism
– Buda/Pest, Hungary
> the decline of memories: fire in the Balkans, smoke and shadows from the twentieth century
– Vukovar, Croatia
> thoughts born walking: past and future in a river of contradictions
– Belgrade, Serbia
> the resistance of the water: the fate of the current at the Iron Gates
– Djerdap, Serbia
> the awakening: from fog to fog, the clarity increases
– Ruse/Giurgiu, Bulgaria/Romania
> awaiting the mouth: one must have faith to live in these places
– Cernavoda/Braila/Tulcea, Romania
> the sea is a deception: needs and mirages in a desert of water
– Delta/Sulina/Black Sea, Romania
Director's Note
I Talk Otherwise seeks to be a snapshot of the twentieth century, a movie that, among other objectives, aims to revisit, in allegorical terms, the social mutations, anthropological attitudes and moral roots of the Europe, in order to portray the end of modern era.
The course of the Danube is a metaphorical trail of a journey to modernity which leads us to indulge in dark and misty waters of the Black Sea, a primordial desert of water from which the horizons of a contemporary man arise.
The title itself is a clear allusion to the fact that the river has its own “alternative” way of speaking to us. It points to an allegory in the etymological sense, expressed not by words, but through a viewpoint of the river itself, a unique mirror of different visions, cultures and
languages.
The water, with its derivations or mutations – both morphological and physiognomic – is a bearing element. A latent means of locomotion that gives drive to the movement of people, animals, cars, trains, planes, ships, a revitalizing agent for a heterogeneity of languages, forces, ages.
The Danube is deceptive. It is prone to hide in the clouds, behind a mountain, next to a vehicle, or even in someone’s words. Although everything will be revealed sooner or later, with the commitment or the indifference of those who, with great wit, manage to catch a glimpse of their already sealed destiny: a great sea of water.