Straddling the border between fiction and reality, Fabiomassimo Lozzi’s Anotherworld explores gay male identity among Italian men. Based on interviews pulled from Antonio Veneziani and Riccardo Reim’s books Pornocuore and I Mignotti, Lozzi’s magnificent film features 43 confessional vignettes which lead to a dizzying array of entry points into machismo, ambiguity, beauty and hatefulness. Lozzi engaged the Actor’s Centre in Rome, which features many of Italy’s most talented (and best looking) actors. In amazingly short sequences, these men are able to communicate gulfs of repression and pride, all the while keeping us focused on oft-tumultuous emotional and sexual tensions.

The film is not for the faint of heart, as there is an explicit attempt to marry poetry and pain in the director’s choices. But, those who give themselves up to the experience are rewarded with moments of haunting beauty and dazzling psychological insights.

At its heart, Anotherworld pushes at the constant struggle that one faces to live both with one’s self and amongst others. It’s in this way that Lozzi has managed to focus on a very specific subject of gay male desire and in the process produced a work of art that is universal. — SEAN UYEHARA