The top Italian film at Italy’s box office in 2022 and declared Film of the Year at the 2023 Nastro d’Argento Awards, Roberto Andò’s imaginative and irreverent twelfth feature Strangeness explores the inspiration behind one of modern Italian theatre’s revolutionary works. It is 1921 and future Literature Nobel Prize Winner Luigi Pirandello (Toni Servillo, The King of Laughter IFF22, The Great Beauty IFF14)) returns to his beloved Sicily for the 80th birthday of his mentor, famous novelist and playwright Giovanni Verga. Upon his arrival in Agrigento, unexpected news catapults him into a universe populated by incredible personalities, ghostly visions, distant memories and melancholy apparitions. Here he encounters a pair of gravediggers/aspiring actors, Onofrio and Sebastiano (comedy duo Salvatore Ficarra and Valentino Picone, Once Upon a Time...in Bethlehem IFF20) who deliver hilarious, amateur stage productions. On this compelling journey Pirandello is stirred out of a creative block and confronts his nostalgia, propelling him toward the creation of his masterpiece, “Six Characters in Search of an Author” a work which will mark a worldwide revolution in twentieth-century theatre.