Premiering for the first time, [ÒDIO], the new film/documentary by Daniela Nicolò and Enrico Casagrande: an investigation carried out with young people of different nationalities and cultural backgrounds.
The starting point is the transformative moment of Shelley’s creature, when it begins to perceive itself as irrevocably excluded from the apparent bliss of other beings, rejected solely for its non-conforming appearance. The monster of the novel is not born, but is “brought into the world” by a community incapable of recognizing it. In this dark mirror—today haunted by fascist and reactionary backlashes—we see reflected the urgent relevance of a mechanism that increasingly rejects, discriminates, and produces new forms of marginalization.
[ÒDIO] is supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (13th edition, 2024), which aims to promote Italian contemporary art worldwide.. It is a 90-minute film-documentary immersed in the here and now: a collective text composed of dozens of different voices and faces that the Motus crew encountered and, in some cases, involved in the preparatory workshop “My rage is a silent raving” (from a poem by Susan Stryker), in order to create a dramaturgy of reflections on the violence that permeates our present.
Participants answered the same 20 questions, here only the first two:
What does the word Hate mean to you?
Do you feel that you hate someone or something? (…)
The presentation will take place on March 12, 2026 at 6:00 PM at MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, partner of the project and repository of the final work.
Daniela Nicolò and Enrico Casagrande will introduce the event in dialogue with Lorenzo Balbi, Director of MAMbo, for an in-depth conversation about the making of the film. The young crew will also be present: Director of Photography Vladimir Bertozzi, filmmaker Filippo Quezel, and editor Elisabetta Giannini de Lillo.
At 8:00 PM, the audience will move to the Cineteca di Bologna for the first screening, followed by an in-depth after-talk on the film.
“We felt it was necessary to address this generation, because in a certain sense the creature (who has no age) goes through a process of ‘growth’ in total solitude until the moment it discovers ‘the father figure’ (who assembled it), by finding his diary. Feeling rejected, it begins to develop a series of retaliatory and vengeful attitudes typical of adolescence toward the absent family institution and society at large.”
(Daniela Nicolò, Enrico Casagrande)
[ÒDIO] thus represents the latest interpretative key in Motus’ research on Mary Shelley’s celebrated novel, begun in 2023 with the debut at Arena del Sole (ERT) of Frankenstein (love story), which returns on March 14 and 15, readapted and paired with the second chapter, Frankenstein (history of hate) (2025).
The diptych does not merely evoke a literary myth; it relaunches it as a political mirror of contemporaneity, at once critical reflection and poetic immersion: what happens when we are not heard and when otherness is perceived as a threat rather than a possibility?
In Frankenstein (love story), the first movement, we delve into the abyssal solitude of Mary Shelley and her creatures: hybrid, marginal, restless bodies searching for love and relationships that prove impossible—unregulated affections, recognition never granted.
Frankenstein (History of Hate) is the backlash, the consequence of rejection, of society’s inability to manage its relationship with the other: it is what happens when love—denied and humiliated—breaks apart, when encounter fails and turns into rejection and rage.
The creature moves swiftly from a tender (and obsessive) love for Dr. Frankenstein to an unquenchable hatred. Perceiving its own monstrosity and inadequacy, it becomes lost in a universe of conflicting emotions that often lead it to lose control. Something similar to the emotional chaos inhabiting the protagonists of the film [ÒDIO], who embody on one hand a sense of injustice and on the other a powerful instinct for self-preservation.
Closing the “Bologna week” dedicated to Motus’ project is the children’s workshop I AM ALIVE, scheduled for March 15, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM in collaboration with the Educational Department of MAMbo | Museo Morandi. A practical and highly enjoyable workshop, created in collaboration with Eduard Popescu, to explore the “beauty” of monsters and the value of diversity.
What does it mean to be different? And what precious gifts can someone who is different from me bring?
A playful investigation to discover wonder through the non-conforming:
if we could color outside the lines, what would the world look like?
The activity is free of charge. Reservation is mandatory and must be made by emailing mamboedu@comune.bologna.it by 4:00 PM on Friday, March 13, 2026.
A Motus project realized in collaboration with MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna | Settore Musei Civici | Comune di Bologna, Dipartimento educativo MAMbo | Museo Morandi, Cineteca di Bologna, and Emilia Romagna Teatro ERT / Teatro Nazionale