Film 'Il Principe di Ostia Bronx' Celebrates Artistic Failure

Raffaele Passerini's documentary 'Il Principe di Ostia Bronx' (2017, 75 min, produced by Kiné) follows Dario and Maury, two rejected artists who perform on the gay nudist beach of Capocotta in Ostia. Premiered at Biografilm Festival 2017 in Bologna and winning several awards, the film is now screening across Italy. Passerini first encountered the duo in 2001, then rediscovered them fifteen years later upon returning from the United States. The film portrays their daily life in a home resembling a Venice Biennale installation, where objects accumulate in a Pop Art-inspired order. They perform improvised theatrical acts with political undertones, documented in amateur videos integrated into the film. Passerini describes the project as both an arrival point and a rebirth, forcing him to confront his own artistic failure. The film challenges societal norms, reversing the roles of healthy and sick as in Italo Svevo's 'La Coscienza di Zeno', suggesting that mainstream society's presumed health is itself a sickness.