fedeli d’Amore is a rewriting and reinvention for cinema of Marco Martinelli's stage poem 'around' Dante and our present, centered on Ermanna Montanari's extraordinary vocal research and Luigi Ceccarelli's electroacoustic music. It is conceived as a "polyptych in seven paintings" in which different voices speak: the fog at dawn in 1321, the demon in the pit where the merchants of death are punished, a donkey that has carried the poet during his last journey, the little devil starting fights over money, Italy that kicks itself, Antonia, Alighieri’s daughter, and "an end that is not an end".
Marco Martinelli is a director and a playwright. In 1983, he founded Teatro delle Albe with Ermanna Montanari, actress, author and set designer, sharing its artistic direction with her. He is the inventor of non scuola, a theatrical-pedagogical practice with youngsters, described in the book Aristofane a Scampia. fedeli d’Amore is his fifth film, a milestone in the itinerary consacred to Dante and celebrating the seven centuries since his death. He shot Vita agli arresti di Aung San Suu Kyi (2017), then in 2018 The Sky over Kibera, both co-signed with Montanari. Er (2020) is dedicated to Ermanna’s art-in-life, followed by Ulysses XXVI (2021). A recent essay by Laura Mariani, professor at DAMS in Bologna, focuses on the visionary force of "cinema in theater" as practiced by Martinelli and Montanari.
