Artaserse was born from the need and the urgency to tell this character and his world, Artaserse, “Serse” for all, is 74 years old, a worker of the Thyssen Krupp steelworks in retirement. Thyssen Krupp steelworks in retirement, was a talented boxer in his youth, isallenatore a bit ‘played but passionate and still active, and still active; but passionate and still active, and finally, for all his life, a painter. Reality, as we know, is the richest and most unpredictable source of inspiration and at a certain point, almost four years ago, we realized that he was giving us the implant of a story. There was already everything in that provincial world that we frequent and that we know so well, starting with from the hero protagonist, the artist boxer Artaserse, to the secondary characters linked to him: a compulsive a compulsive collector and fixer, an innkeeper friend who charges lunches and dinners with paintings, a talking cricket, an old friend and a talented electronic musician with a tormented life, as well as many other characters.

Tormented life, in addition to the many other masks, no less interesting, which are the corollary. We have fantasized about the script that in our opinion could fit better to animate this world and we found it easily. This world and we have found it easily in what to us, that we are called Versus not by chance, it succeeds best: the clash of the characters by chance, succeeds best: the clash. The narrative key was the one that in our opinion would make the best, so we have called our hero and his friends to act out their own lives in a grotesque fairy tale that sees Artaserse engaged in a futuristic encounter-contrast with the world of art. More generally we can say that all our suburban knights, live a constant battle, each in its own way, with life itself and with the contemporary society itself and with the contemporary society of which they are more or less consciously on the margins. The all is dipped in the Umbrian province, in the Terni “bay of steel” where we were born and grown up too, with a “dream that sticks like glue to the soul” and with all the risks of the case. Who is the artist? Who can be defined as such? Who decides? Who writes the story and who remains in the shadows? In our opinion Artaserse is a great artist in all respects, an incredible talent in drawing and the value of his work is undeniable.

The value of his work is undeniable. Of course a fundamental role is played by money, the market and the system, but the system, but let’s not forget that Vincent Van Gogh did not sell even one of his works when he was alive, and playing on this paradox we have decided to build our project. The production process passed through two registers, that of the documentary and that of the fiction, which are constantly intertwined with each other. In fact, during these four years of filming we have worked on the one hand in a documentary key, following our characters in their everyday life and collecting everyday life and collecting archive images on their account, on the other hand the staging of a pre-established storyboard, through the inclusion of professional actors who are called to interact directly with our characters. called to interact directly with our characters and that become mimetically part of their reality their reality. Artaserse has been a real experiment and is part of the attempt to make a completely self-produced film of which we are a part. completely self-produced film of which we were at the same time creators, directors, cameramen, and screenwriters, camera operators and screenwriters.

This allowed us to become an integral part of the story and to live in close contact with our protagonists and to live in close contact with our protagonists, breaking down the barrier that is created in camera between those who act and those who really live what they are witnessing witnessing. All in the style of Versus, characterized by the friendly convergence of conflict of styles, points of view and method, of two artists trying to tell a third.