The Employed (Italy, 2026, 60′)

Wednesday, October 7, 7:00 p.m., Cinema Massimo, Theater 3

  Buy your ticket online

Italian subtitles

World Premiere

International title: The Employed
Original title: The Employed
Director, photography, edit, sound, production: Tommaso Cotronei

Summer. In an area of northern Italy, construction workers are on the job at a site. Each day is the same as the day before. The gestures repeat while construction progresses. Only the lunch break gives a little rest to both men and machines, between what came before and what follows, defined by labor and sweat. At the end of the day, the men return home to carry out other rituals and repetitions waiting to start working again the next morning in that construction site that the movie describes in detail and to which the movie portrays and continually returns to. If it leaves it behind, it is only temporary to follow some workers in their private life or to show us glimpses of the scenery. 

With The Employed – world premiere at this Festival – Tommaso Cotronei explores spaces and bodies with a watchful eye. His sober way of shooting clearly brings to the forefront caught in an alienating cycle. 

Tommaso Cotronei. Born in a little town in Calabria in 1955. From a young age, he began to work in the fields with his parents. At the age of 21, he escaped from that reality that didn’t offer any perspective, he spent a period in northern Europe doing some handiwork and studied philosophy in Rome without graduating. The turning point came in 1993 when he became Vittorio De Seta’s assistant director on the set of the film In Calabria, finally finding in cinema a way to express himself, and doing it in a totally independent manner. 

Partial Filmography:Lavoratori (mlf, doc., 2005), Ritrarsi (mlf, doc., 2008), Preparativi di fuga (mlf, doc., 2008), Terra (mlf, doc., 2010), Scuola di uomini (doc., 2011), The Difference (mlf, doc., 2012), Covered with the Blood of Jesus (doc., 2015), Blood and the Moon (doc., 2017), Kibera (mlf, doc., 2019), Desert Train (mlf, doc., 2022), Myanmar (doc., 2025), The Employed (doc., 2026).