Nominated for Best Documentary Feature
Q&A with Director LEONE
A journey towards personal affirmation, a great passion for the pimp of Api Piaggio and a strong sense of camaraderie is what unites the young guys of the Trigno Valley, the river that divides Abruzzo and Molise. An archive of faces, interviews, and family portraits follow one another, depicting different and exciting stories.
LEONE’s feature debut examines human unity within the margins of rural Italy. Sting Like A Bee follows a group of Italian teenagers and their families, connected by the unlikely symbol of the 1948 Piaggio Ape: a small, three-wheeled commercial vehicle with an almost sacred status, considered to be a true icon of Italian design in the world.
As LEONE entwines wonderfully sincere musings about generational intimacy, seduction and friendship within scenes of colourful starkness – a factory, a road, a dining table – it becomes apparent that for these youths, who grew up in the unassuming peripheries of the Italian countryside, there is a community and escapism afforded by the Ape, in an otherwise isolated existence.
Gradually, LEONE’s documentary shifts into surrealist fiction; initially, he converses with potential actors about making a film, and then, almost silently, begins it – deftly, the feature weaves between the fourth and fifth walls. Layerings of whimsical fantasy – a robot, a resurrected body – are added almost nonchalantly onto what initially appears to be a candid snapshot of rural life, typifying the quiet, otherworldly magic also considered of the Ape.
Ultimately, Sting Like A Bee affords its viewers a richly captured closeness into a fierce, almost spiritual unity conjured from the most unlikely of vehicles.
Review by Bryony Chellew
Supported by the Italian Cultural Institute
