The Decameron

Ten young people escape to the abandoned village of Decameron to avoid the latest, deadliest version of pandemic flu. In the village, mobile phones, computers and satellite navigation don't work. This means that seven women and three men who don't know each other are completely cut off from the world. Their refuge is a former theatre whose dark corners hide old costumes, pieces of sets, even musicians. The refugees start to discover the world of plays and theatre by choosing a daily topic and staging it under the leadership of the person chosen to be the governor or director for the day. The sparks of affection between them burst into flames of happy, but also some unrequited loves, the play of bodies and caresses awakens their inner desires and passion, which consume them so much that they forget about despair, and the fear of disease and death. Taken with each other, and also with the acting that liberates them through tears and laughter and confronts them with genuine human condition, they ask themselves at the end if they even want to return to the high-tech world.

“The human comedy”, as the witty and benevolent Giovanni Boccaccio himself referred to his collection of 100 novellas entitled The Decameron (“ten days”) is, along with Dante’s The Divine Comedy, the harbinger of a new perception of the world, the renaissance or the rebirth of man, when human spirit turned to researching the human in all its dimensions. To a modern human being, living in the culture imbued with technology that generates emotions of fear, anxiety and guilt, this can be not only an entertaining, but also an educational experience.