1970s, central Italy. In a small mountain village, Pietro, a child raised by a harsh father and asphyxiated by debt, manifests mysterious talents: he bends metals at the mere touch. An American scientist begins to study it. The experiments will bring Pietro into contact with the invisible world, where the laws of physics give way to the deepest desires.
The film is freely inspired by a little-known story: the phenomenon of the so-called "minigellers", that is, those children who at the end of the Seventies, after having attended the television performance of the illusionist Uri Geller, apparently capable of bending keys and spoons at the mere touch, they began to exhibit similar phenomena. Two Italian university professors conducted scientific studies on some of these children from 1975 to 1980, collecting the results of their experiences in a large typescript, which was never published. None of these experiments, however, reached the point, that is, the scientific demonstration of the existence of a paranormal phenomenon.
The properties of metals found its preview in the Generation KPlus section of the Berlinale 2023.
Antonio Bigini (1980) is a screenwriter, curator and director. He directed the documentary Ella Maillart-Double Journey (Visions du réel, 2015) with Mariann Lewinsky. He is the author of the film Anita by Luca Magi (Doclisboa, 2012). For the Cineteca di Bologna he curated various exhibitions on the history of cinema (Sergio Leone, Marcello Mastroianni, Pier Paolo Pasolini, etc.) set up at museums such as the Cinémathèque Française, the Ara Pacis, the Museum of Rome, the MAMbo. The Properties of Metals is his first feature film.
