Directors' notes

La Genovesa is a state-funded drug and alcohol rehabilitation center that, for decades, has been taking in people of all ages and backgrounds in need of addiction recovery. In September 2020 they accepted our proposal of a co-creation process carried out with the collective involvement of the guests of the community.
Besieged by the motorway junction, exposed to state land litigations, and to the ceaseless buzz of productivity, La Genovesa is a bubble of unreality in a harrowing landscape. Thus, immersing Ortese’s writing in this setting was the obvious choice to us since her works strongly denounce the inhumanity of economic progress, the price of which is often paid by the gentle creatures. In her books Ortese narrates the soul of a place, peering into the psychological landscape of its temporary inhabitants, not by the objective description but rather through the hazy mirror of fantastic.
The House in the Woods gives us the spatial and thematic coordinates within which we have tried to film this collective dream of the rehab guests. The House is La Genovesa, a country house converted into a long-term residential facility. The House is shelter and care but also a place one has to leave to return to the world. The Woods are the surrounding lands, where vegetable gardens and stables give way to acacia scrub, high-tension pylons, concrete piers, building pits, and heaps of gravel. The Woods is what blurs the vision, a disheartening dark forest that branches off into uncertain and mazy paths. This is where you can have encounters casting light on your path as well as putting obstacles in it, all of them, however, helping us to push ourselves towards the edge of the wood, where the eyes can finally run free.