Six Neorealist Portraits

Overview

Robert Morin's camera roams through Rome, a phantom crossing borders, observing six individuals who migrated to the city from Africa. At night, television screens play Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves; by day, news broadcasts, comedians, and onlookers watch with an almost Orwellian detachment as human life struggles forward in its quest for dignity. Morin continues his numerology of the world in a film that draws on the history of cinema to confront a reality riddled with meaningless screens. A finale that shatters the mirror. And stitches it back together.